


i've been sleepwalking too close to the fire

by elsaclack



Series: oh, and i don't wanna wake up [1]
Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: (basically i'm just making all of this up as i go along lol), Angst, F/M, Gen, So much angst, YOU get some angst and YOU get some angst and YOU get some angst, a loose understanding of how cartels work, basically RIP me, hardcore undercover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-17
Updated: 2017-02-20
Packaged: 2018-07-24 15:21:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 87,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7513294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elsaclack/pseuds/elsaclack
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Amy goes undercover immediately following the events of Johnny and Dora. Jake and the others try to deal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. laid beside you and pulled you close

**Author's Note:**

> HELLO CHILDREN WELCOME TO THE HELLFIC THAT HAS BEEN RUINING MY LIFE FOR THE LAST TWO WEEKS.
> 
> So basically this is a rewrite of the very first fic I ever wrote for B99, Heliocentrism (but please don't let that turn you off this one is much better written okay) except this time it's written around the concept of Amy being sent undercover right after the major events of Johnny and Dora. Angst abounds tbh.
> 
> I also want to mention that I heavily collaborated with philthestone on this one - many dialogue sections were written by her!
> 
> I'm going to try to keep things relatively surface-level so I don't have to up the rating, but this will definitely be a T. Please don't put your mental/emotional well-being at risk if stuff like this is triggering for you. Those things are way more important than fanfiction.
> 
> Anyways, I hope you guys enjoy this!! I've already got the next two parts written, but I'm not planning on posting part 2 until I finish writing part 4. I won't post part 3 until part 5 is written, etc. etc. At this point, I'm planning on having 5-6 chapters. But y'all know how fast that number can change lmao.
> 
> The title (and subsequent chapter titles) are all lines from the song Burning House by Cam.
> 
> OKAY no more delaying it, here's part 1!!

Amy comes to Jake’s apartment after leaving the precinct, right after getting the news.

It’s almost seven and he’s been home for a while now, wallowing on the couch, too caught up in his own stupid head to recognize the sharp edge of hunger slicing through his stomach or the rasp in his throat from the thirst that plagues him. He doesn’t really feel any of it, because his attention is focused on his phone’s tiny screen.

He flicks through picture after picture, pausing occasionally when one makes him smile. He’s pretty sure his whole life has gone to hell (okay, no, it hasn’t, but give him a break - he’d just kissed his partner twice the night before for stupid reasons, reasons that don’t fall anywhere on his List of Reasons Why Amy Santiago is His Favorite Person, not to mention the whole Holt’s-leaving-the-Nine-Nine thing Holt announced just a matter of hours ago). The new captain, Captain...what was it, Dozerman? Captain Dozerman made it abundantly clear within the first twenty seconds of setting foot into the bullpen that he was _not_ going to try to fill Holt’s shoes.

He still remembers the tenseness rippling through his teammates (Dozerman just got there earlier that afternoon, after all), the way Charles’ breath caught in his throat, the way Amy bounced on the balls of her feet like she always does when she’s nervous, the way Terry’s weight shifted from foot to foot. He’d inhaled deeply when the elevator dinged and nearly coughed on the stench of cigarettes clinging to the air around Amy - she’d snuck out to the terrace five minutes after Holt left for good (which Jake politely pretended not to notice) and stayed there smoking cigarette after cigarette until Terry called her back in to meet the new captain - and when the doors opened, he released his breath.

Dozerman shouted, voice harsh and commanding, about working eight times harder than they’ve ever worked in their lives. He’d paused, hand rising seemingly unconsciously to rub his chest, but then he’d shaken his head and straightened up.

“Dismissed! Except, uh...you, three calorie female. You come with me to my office.”

“S-sir?” Amy stammered.

Dozerman marched past her. “ _Now,_ detective!”

Amy scurried after him immediately without a backwards glance, and the whole squad stared after her until the office door closed and the blinds drew shut.

Hours later, she still hadn’t emerged, and Jake slung his bag over his shoulder reluctantly. He’d really hoped to talk to her again before leaving for the day - because no matter _what_ he did, something still felt off, _wrong_ , and it sat like a dead weight in his stomach - but there was no movement beyond the door. His gaze flickered down to where her cardigan hung over the back of her chair to her phone next to her keyboard, and with one last sigh, he turned on his heel and left.

He unlocked his apartment and trudged inside, letting his bag slip off his shoulder and land with a thump and his jacket slide off his arms to pool at his feet. He made a beeline for his couch and threw himself down with a melodramatic groan, and hasn’t moved since.

His life _could not_ get any worse.

His ma always used to show him old photo albums when he got bummed out as a kid (so mostly in the hours after realizing his dad was, once again, a no-show). Initially he thought it worked in cheering him up because it was a reminder of how good things used to be. But now, as a thirty-something year old adult, he realizes it’s because those photos are physical reminders of all the love and happiness he’s capable of feeling, and a promise of what he could one day feel again.

Unsurprisingly, he lingers on the rather sizable collection of selfies he has of himself and Amy. There are twenty-seven of them all clustered together - he’d made a bet with himself that he could take thirty selfies with her in a week before she caught on to what he was doing. She’s looking at the camera in about half of them, smiling in some, and in one in particular she’d leaned over to prop her chin on his shoulder while he took the picture. He swears he can still feel the warm weight of her on his shoulder.

There’s a knock on the door, which jolts him out of his memories. He sighs and haphazardly tosses his phone on the coffee table without bothering to lock the screen and hauls himself up to shuffle to the door. All the heaviness he’d felt upon arriving back home is back in droves, and he can feel himself literally sagging as he walks.

Amy’s standing on his welcome mat, head turned to her right to look down his hallway, and his breath catches. She turns to him and for a split second, he rejoices, because Amy’s _here_ and this is _just like_ all the stupid old romantic comedies Gina used to make him watch when they were teenagers...except, hold on, wait. Amy’s eyes are too wide and her brows are drawn together and her hands tremble as she twists them in front of her. She leans forward and bounces on the balls of her feet, and his stomach turns.

“What’s up, Amy?” He asks, voice rasping.

She releases a shuddering breath, brows drawing even further together, and Jake’s concern for the woman before him spikes to record-breaking heights. “Do-...Dozerman, he...it was _random_ , Jake, he didn’t even pick me because he thought I was qualified, I was _literally_ just the closest person to him, and he...I mean -” she stops, swallows thickly, and continues “- this hardly even counts as a _notice_ , like, is this even legal?”

He shakes his head, bewildered.

“No, yeah, it is, because, because there were _agents_ on the line, and a case file, and the commissioner, and -”

She’s babbling, he realizes, which is yet another one of her tells. He’s seen them all individually over the years, sometimes in pairs, but never all at the same time - shaking hands, bouncing, babbling - and it’s seriously freaking him out. “Ames,” he interrupts softly. This seems to steal the breath from her; she pants, head turned down to stare at her feet. “What’s going on?”

It takes another moment, but when she turns her head up to look at him her eyes are swimming in tears. His heart skips a beat. “I’m...going undercover.” His eyebrows shoot up toward his hairline. “The Fumero drug cartel.” She adds, voice more quiet than he’s ever heard. His jaw drops. “They want to start my briefing tomorrow, Jake. Today was my last day at the nine-nine.”

“What? What do you... _what_?”

She bounces on the balls of her feet again, a low whine that seems to originate from the center of her chest leaking from her lips. “I know, _I know_ , but I don’t have a choice. I’m, I’m freaking out, Jake, I’m _freaking out_ , this cartel is _so dangerous_ and they...they want me to... _engage in congress_ with one of the bosses.”

Amy’s chest is heaving, and Jake feels like a hole has suddenly been blown through his.

“I’m freaking out, okay, I’m scared to death, and I know...I _know_ that things have been weird, with, with _us_ ,” her hand jerks between them, like she’s trying to gesture, but her muscles won’t cooperate smoothly, “but...God, Jake, I _need_ to talk about this and there’s _no one_ else I want to talk to about this stuff than you.”

It’s like being slapped in the face with urgency and knocked over the head with sense at the same time. She doesn’t actually say it, but he can see it in her eyes, her unspoken _I need you._ He practically leaps out of her way, stammering “come in, come in” with a weird flourishing gesture toward the interior of his apartment. Amy moves past him quickly, stepping over his discarded bag and jacket and heading straight toward his couch because she’s been here before and she knows where his couch is and oh _God_ this could be the last time she ever comes here because she's _going undercover_.

He closes and locks his door quickly and rushes to join her. She’s perched right on the edge of the couch cushion, turned to the side, so that her legs are crossed beneath her at her ankles and her hands are clasped together tightly on her lap. Her shoulders slope down at an unfamiliar angle and her chin is tucked down close to her chest. Her eyes dart around the room quickly, like a caged, frightened animal searching for signs of danger, never lingering in one place for too long. It sets him on edge, even more so than he was before.

He’s still trying to think of what to say when he notices that she’s gone completely still. Her gaze is fixated on something on his coffee table.

His phone, screen still on, still displaying the selfie where her chin was on his shoulder.

His initial instinct is to dive forward and snatch the phone up to hide it, as if shoving it between his couch cushions will erase the picture - and the implications of that picture being on blatant display on his phone - from her memory. But he resists.

Amy came to _him,_ after all.

So instead of lurching forward and doing something stupid, he holds still. He turns his head toward her, and a beat later she meets his gaze. For one endless second, they just stare at each other.

He’s not sure, exactly, which one of them initiates it; part of him thinks that maybe it was a divine intervention, like their guardian angels got so sick of watching them hem and haw that they stepped in and forced it. It doesn’t _really_ matter, because Amy’s fingers are slipping through his hair and he’s got a hand grazing over the bend of her waist to curl against her spine and another slipping up between her shoulders to draw her closer and he’s kissing her with everything he has and _she’s kissing back._

Little noises of desperation pass between them, their origins unclear, and Jake quickly maneuvers them so that she’s leaned back against the couch cushions and he’s kneeling between her legs. She’s just as soft and warm as he gathered the night before, and this time he’s not kissing Dora in some restaurant or his partner as a diversion, he’s kissing _Amy_. Soft, beautiful, warm, familiar _Amy_. This time, he gets to marvel at how well his hands fit between her shoulder blades. This time, he gets to appreciate the fact that her nails are the perfect length to comb through his hair. It's the best kiss he's ever had in his life by at least a mile.

Except...she’s trembling. He’s only felt her do this one other time - March of 2011, when they were chasing their perp along the banks of the Hudson and in the darkness she miscalculated the structural integrity of the riverbank and ended up tumbling into the water. She was only submerged briefly, but by the time he had their perp in handcuffs and had made it back to her, her lips were blue. He’d immediately ripped his coat off and wrapped it around her, and when that only improved her state by a fraction, he pulled her into a bear hug without a second thought. Her whole body pressed up against him back then, just like it did now as she arches her torso, and he’d quickly ran his hands up and down her back in an effort to generate some warmth.

He follows his own lead now, nuzzling his way down the side of her face until his lips are pressed against the crook of her neck. He burrows his arms beneath her and squeezes, hard and insistent enough that she knows what he’s doing, but not so hard that she can’t wriggle free. Her hands drift from his hair down his neck to scrabble along his shoulder blades and her chest quakes against his, brimming with harsh sobs.

“It’s okay,” he whispers against her skin, forgetting that just a second ago his tongue was in her mouth, forgetting why she’s here, forgetting why she’s panicking, forgetting who he is entirely. All of it goes flying out the window because Amy is crying in front of him for the third time in six years and it’s been his top priority to _fix_ whatever is broken and hurting her since that very first time. “It’s okay, Ames, it’s all gonna be okay, sh…” The sobs come spilling out of her chest now, broken and hoarse, and her nails dig sharply into his skin through the thin material of his shirt. “You’re okay, you’re safe, Ames, you’re safe…”

The words feel strange in his mouth, but he presses on, because he knows just how much that simple phrase calms her down. He can already feel her racing heartbeat slowing down where it hammers against his chest, her gut-wrenching sobs deteriorating fractionally, and her death-grip on his shirt loosening to a gentle strangle-hold.

He keeps up his whispered reassurances until she goes still beneath him, limp and spent, and he eases away from her slowly. She’s staring up at him through bloodshot eyes, tear tracks still glittering down her temples. “C’mon,” he hears himself murmur.

She lets him pull her up off the couch and her arms loop around his waist loosely once she's on her feet. He throws his arm around her shoulder and presses a kiss against the side of her head as they shuffle toward his bedroom together.

He has to mentally shake himself as she sits on the edge of his bed. He refuses to let himself think that this might be the only chance he'll ever get to see Amy Santiago crawl into his bed.

“C’mere,” he says, gently tugging at her wrist until she follows his lead. She ends up on the right side of the bed, dark hair fanned out on the pillow beneath her, and once she stops shifting restlessly he leans down and presses a kiss against her forehead. It doesn’t escape his notice that she seems to lean into it, or that her upper body briefly leaves the mattress when he pulls away, like she’s chasing after his touch. “I’m gonna take your shoes off,” he says, smoothing her hair back from her forehead with one hand.

He perches at the foot of the bed and takes his time methodically unzipping each of her boots, rubbing soothing circles against her ankles with the pad of his thumb. He has a near-violent flashback to the summer of 2009 when she sprained her ankle and he ended up flat on his butt in an alley in Queens with Amy’s foot in his lap while they waited for an ambulance, gently poking and prodding at her throbbing ankle while she bit back grunts and moans of pain. She sniffles quietly now, which is a sharp contrast to that night.

The sun has set and his apartment is only dimly lit (thanks in large part to the fact that his main overhead light burned out two weeks ago and he just hadn’t gotten around to getting to the bodega for a replacement), and something about the long, bluish-purple shadows stretching lazily across his walls make Amy’s eyes glitter in the darkness. If he were himself, he’d make a joke about Zooey Deschanel needing her doe-eyes back.

But he’s _not_ himself, because Amy’s laying in his bed and she’s leaving tomorrow and he has no idea when he’ll see her again.

_If_ he’ll see her again.

He sheds only his shoes before climbing in on his normal side of the bed, dropping down on his left side so that he’s facing her. She turns her head on the pillow and looks at him, eyes wide-open, a breath-taking kind of vulnerability there. And his heart lurches in his chest, because Amy trusts him. It makes the primitive part of his brain - the part Gina (and later Rosa) spent _years_ teaching him how to tamp out - roar to life, chest swelling and his throat closing up. She trusts him enough to be this broken and vulnerable and _damn it_ he’s going to do whatever it takes to make sure she feels comfortable and safe enough to do that with him.

Amy rolls to her right side, her left hand landing on the mattress between them, and he reaches forward to lace their fingers together automatically.

“I don’t...I don’t want you to think that this -” she squeezes his fingers “- is a...a heat of the moment kind of thing. Because it isn’t. I...I really do, y’know...care. About you.”

Jake feels himself starting to shut down and recoil, because, you know, _feelings_ , but he forces himself to snap out of it. These are _Amy’s_ feelings. And he’d probably be willing to talk about that particular subject all day long.

“I just...I know that, in the restaurant, and again in the park, that was, like...that _was_ heat of the moment. Sort of? It was, uh, self-...self-preservation, I guess,” she furrows her brow, swallows, and nods. “But this, this...this is _more._ It’s _real._ And I never...I _never_ want you to think that I’m, that I came here expecting this to happen, like a, like a, um…”

“Like an end-of-the-world kind of thing?” he offers, and she nods. “I know. I know it’s not like that, Ames.” And he’s pretty certain that there’s a part of him that really did know that already, but seeing her nod of confirmation quells the little anxiety still clinging to him. He squeezes back, and a humorless smile that doesn’t reach her eyes flashes across her face. “I, uh,” he coughs, “I _really_ like you.” He finishes in a rush.

Her face seems to relax marginally. “I like you, too,” she whispers.

He smiles, briefly, and steels himself. “I just, I’m...I’m really, like, this is -” he huffs and squeezes his eyes shut, “this is gonna suck. _So bad._ Would...I mean, you, you leave...tomorrow?”

She nods slowly.

He exhales like he’s just been punched in the gut (which he has, verbally) and shifts a little closer to her on the mattress. “Could...I mean, um...you don’t have to, obviously, but…”

“Ask me,” she whispers.

“Will you stay here tonight?” He says in one breath. “We don’t, like, we don’t have to _do_ anything, like if we just fell asleep like this I’d be happy, I just, I - I need to be, um...I _need_ you.”

She leans in over their joined hands and kisses him, and he feels his heart skip. She pulls away slowly, her forehead lingering against his. “Yes.” She says softly as his eyes flutter open.

She pulls away from him, retreats back to her own pillow, and falls asleep within an hour. He drifts off to the sight of her sleeping face and wakes an hour later to her body pressed against his, moving slowly and hypnotically. His lips find hers in the darkness and, after some half-asleep undressing and maneuvering, he gets her spread out on the mattress beneath him, doe-eyes bright and olive skin glowing in the moonlight. It ends far too quickly, their sharp cries muffled into damp skin, fingers curling and gripping and grazing and pulling, breath escaping in puffs between swollen lips in stolen moments between lingering kisses.

She ends up laying halfway on top of him, supported by one arm bent at the elbow near his shoulder, lips and teeth working studiously along the column of his throat. His hands travel up and down her body, touching, feeling, desperate to commit every detail of this moment - to commit every detail of  _her_ \- to memory. His mouth is lost in the tangles of her hair and broken and half-whimpered praises tumble from his lips unhindered by filters of workplace appropriateness and embarrassment. “You’re everything, you’re ev- _everything_ ,” he hears himself choke.

In a flash, her lips are crushed against his again, her hands gripping either side of his face, a desperate whine slipping through from the back of her throat, and it all comes rushing back to him at once - she’s _leaving._ She came here to say goodbye, because she’s leaving, and she may not ever come back, and, and -

“Wait - _mmoh_ -” he groans between her peppered kisses, “wait, no, _Amy_.” She jerks back, chest heaving, question somehow clear in her too-dark eyes. “We’re, we’re not doing this, we’re _not_ saying goodbye -”

She lurches back toward him, swallowing whatever half-articulated argument he was about to launch at her, and this time her kiss is firmer and more in-control. Amy pulls away, lips smacking, and releases one laugh that sounds more like a bark. “Don’t be an idiot.” She says, voice low. And to an outsider listening in, it might sound like their typical banter.

But Jake knows better. He senses the warning, feels the implications -

Of  _ course _ this isn’t goodbye -

\- this is -

\- a beginning -

\- a declaration -

\- a  _ promise _ .

He doesn’t try to speak again after that, because he knows that he’s not capable of packing so much - _so much_ \- into four concise little words.

He shows her, instead. He’s always been more of a hands-on kind of guy, anyways.

They’re up well into the night, communicating without words, and by the time four o’clock in the morning rolls around he can’t keep his eyes open no matter how hard he tries. He curls an arm around Amy’s shoulders, pulling her in closer to him, the sounds of her deep, rhythmic breathing soothing him to sleep.

When his alarm goes off two hours later, he wakes to his arm stretched across an empty mattress. She’s gone, no visible trace left of her. Except for the cardigan he recognizes from the back of her desk chair, now draped over the arm of his second-favorite massage chair.

There’s a an unfamiliar key on his kitchen counter, and a note beside it: _water my plants and get my mail, please ❤_

He stares at the crudely drawn heart (Amy has never been able to draw hearts, it’s like, a thing that he’s been teasing her over for years now) and wonders if she drew it there as a clue, a wordless confirmation that she had indeed stolen his heart in the middle of the night, taken it out of his wide-open chest and tucked it into her purse before she left. Because his chest is open and gaping and he can’t feel his heart beating anymore, and this is the only viable reason he can come up with for it.

Tears come, but sobs don’t. So he’s just a naked idiot standing in his kitchen, staring at a poorly-drawn heart while salty tears drip down his face.

He doesn’t find her second note until he’s leaving his apartment for work, showered and dressed and numb all over. It’s taped to his front door, and when he sees it, his stomach drops to his feet.

_Don’t be an idiot._

He’s got half a mind to pull it down, but he stops himself.

The drive to work passes in a fog. When he pulls into his parking spot it hits him briefly that he doesn’t really have a solid memory of driving there, but he guesses it doesn’t matter, because he got there. He got to work. Not like Amy or Holt, they’re not there. Because they don’t technically work there anymore.

This is going to _suck_.

He trudges in and barely manages to nod to the beat cops that greet him cheerfully by name, suddenly wishing he’d remembered his sunglasses. This ache, this pain in his chest, it seems to radiate through his entire body, and it’s worse than any hangover he has _ever_ had. And, somehow, the idea of having some small shield between himself and the rest of the world so that he can tend to his wounds in peace sounds wonderful.

Gina stares at him over the distance between his desk and hers (half of which is measured by Amy's empty desk) for twenty minutes after he drops into his seat, one of her dainty eyebrows cocked. “What?” He barks after it finally unnerves him.

(It’s the first time he’s spoken since last night.)

“Nothin’,” Gina says with an innocent shrug. “I would maybe button that top button up, though, buttercup. You got a hickey playing peek-a-boo with the new captain.”

He flushes and immediately begins fumbling with the top button of his button-down, glaring down at his desk to avoid eye-contact. Except his hands are shaking and he can’t get the stupid fabric to just _work right_ and -

Gina's suddenly standing over him; she swats his hands away from his neck and accomplishes what he can’t with far steadier hands. “There,” she says uncharacteristically softly, fingers smoothing his collar down.

“Thanks,” he rasps, eyes stinging. “It was, uh...a long night.”

“Glad you got to say goodbye.” She says, a vague smirk appearing for a moment on her face.

“T-to, uh, what?”

She sighs impatiently, crosses her arms over her chest, and taps her foot. He’s suddenly reminded of their second grade teacher, who used to pull that exact pose whenever he started in on one of his fantastical daydream adventures (or, as she put it, “slacking off in class while distracting the other kids” - potato, potato). He releases a breath and some of the tension he didn’t realize he was carrying in his shoulders goes with it.

“Yeah. Yeah, I...uh-huh.”

She touches his upper arm lightly with her fist. “You okay, Pineapples?”

He clenches his jaw. “No.” He says, and he kind of hates that he _really_ wants to cry.

She makes a noise in her throat, an understanding hum, and pats his shoulder. “You’re gonna be fine, babe.” She says, and part of her almost believes her. “And I know that now’s probably not the _best_ time for this, but I gotta say it.” She leans in a little closer. “ _Finally._ ”

He feels himself flush, and now Gina’s got this self-satisfied grin on her face, because apparently that reaction is all the confirmation she needs.

Luckily, before he can embarrass himself further, Dozerman appears in the doorway of the captain’s office. “You, administrative assistant! Back to your desk! Peralta! I need those case files completed and _on my desk_ by _noon_!”

“Yes, sir,” Jake grumbles as Gina scurries away.

Dozerman is dead by eleven. Jake’s still not totally sure how it happened - all he heard was a fizzing rush of a soda exploding, followed by a ground-shaking bellow whose origins lie somewhere between Hitchcock and Scully, and then the sound of a body hitting the break room floor.

Even as EMTs rush the scene and the precinct comes to a complete stand-still, Jake finds his gaze wandering to the empty desk across from his, and the mostly-empty office beyond it.


	2. and i'd be the one you thought you'd find (a)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listen. i hope you guys are ready for this. because this chapter clocked in at 16 pages and it's the shortest chapter i have written so far.
> 
> this is another reminder that this whole fic has been heavily co-written with philthestone

Raymond Holt is not an emotional man.

That’s not to imply that he doesn’t _have_ emotions or _understand_ emotions. On the contrary, he’s really _quite good_ at emotions. He just finds the territory a bit foreign and uncomfortable; it took him three years to recognize the fact that he was in love with Kevin, after all.

(The realization came to him one night at a Hibachi grill, right as the chef made a pseudo volcano out of a stack of onions. He leaned over and murmured it in Kevin’s ear; Kevin smiled at him and said, “I love you, too, of course.” Like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

And perhaps it was.)

But he does love Kevin, very deeply. He loves his sister and his mother and he feels a deep affection for Cheddar (he’s still hesitant to call it ‘love’ because of the incident with the pee stain in his office chair). He cares a great deal for each individual in his precinct (his _former_ precinct) and he well and truly despises one Madeline Wuntch. So, yes, he feels emotions. But in a very precise and logical way.

Which is why it’s so strange to him that he finds himself sitting on a stool at his kitchen island rubbing his temples and fighting off the urge to cry.

He supposes it isn’t all that strange, really. He’s just been “promoted” to Public Relations three days previously (and he’d been officially removed from the Nine-Nine the following day) and, to top it all off, he took Kevin to the airport just that morning before work for his Parisian Sabbatical. Their house is far larger than he remembers, and he’s certain part of the blame for that falls on the fact that he’s home before six PM for the first time in twenty-two-and-a-half months.

Cheddar stretches across the floor and sighs heavily, and Ray almost chuckles.

So, yes, he has quite a few reasons for fighting back tears, but none of them seem to sit correctly with him as _the reason_. He knows, deep down in his core, that there’s something...else. Something bigger that’s bothering him, something he can’t quite put his finger on. And even though he’s been doing his best to push it from his memory, his mind wanders back to the conversation he had in his new office just before leaving for the day.

“Excuse me, Captain Holt?” A familiar voice called. He’d looked up from his computer, and Agent Melanie Larson was standing in his doorway, case file clutched to her chest.

“Agent Larson,” Ray stood and extended his hand, which she shook with a polite, professional smile. “What brings you to PR?”

“Captain Dozerman died yesterday afternoon of a massive heart attack.” She said as she sat in the seat across from his.

He couldn’t breathe for a moment, but the moment passed and he sat down heavily. “How tragic.” He said stiffly. _Emotion: surprise._

“Yes, very. He was in the midst of helping us with a very high-profile case.” She drummed her fingers along the edge of her case file absently. “With his passing, your superior officers are left in a bit of a scramble to replace him. I thought it wise to come to you for the information we need in the interim.”

Ray lifted his chin a fraction. _Emotion: curiosity._ “Information regarding…?”

“Classified.” She said. “Need-to-know only, Captain. You understand.”

“Yes, of course. I would be happy to supply any information I can.”

“Excellent.” She flipped the file open and scanned the top page. “We were hoping to tap into the detective squad at the Nine-Nine for some assistance on this case. I need to know their individual strengths and weaknesses.”

“I’m not sure that I can accurately describe those without some context. I would need to know the nature of the case in order to do that.”

“Strengths and weaknesses, Captain Holt.”

He sighed. _Emotion: impatience_. “Could you clarify?”

“Of course. For instance, which detective would you consider to be the fastest on their feet?”

“That would be Detective Peralta.” Funny, he remembers a little pang in his chest. Something like...melancholy.

But the feeling vanished at the incredulous look on Larson’s face. “Um...Peralta?” She asked slowly.

_Emotion: irritation_ . He’d narrowed his eyes. “Jacob Peralta was one of the best detectives - if not  _ the _ best detective in my former precinct. Have you gathered a different impression, Agent Larson?”

She exhaled a little loudly (now that he’s rehashing it he might even describe it as a _sigh_ , how melodramatic) and leaned forward, case file pressed to her chest. “Captain Holt, with all due respect,” she’d started, “my impression of Peralta is that he is a complete emotional wreck who has no apparent problem with arriving to work an _hour and_ _forty-five_ _minutes late_ with a rather large hickey _clearly_ visible on his neck. I’m not sure _what_ we’re experiencing differently.”

_Emotion: shock_ . He couldn’t even bring himself to blink; he’d just stared at her.

“That...doesn’t make any sense.” He’d said slowly. Larson leaned back in her seat, eyebrow arched. “Neither - I mean, Peralta is a bit _unprofessional_ at times, but he isn’t - he’s always _engaged_ \- and I don’t - Agent Larson, a _hick-_ ”

“Captain Holt -”

“Agent Larson, _why_ are you here?”

She purses her lips for a moment, obviously appraising him, and then slowly lowers her case file. “Upon Captain Dozerman’s suggestion, a Detective Amy Santiago was sent undercover infiltrating the Fumero drug cartel two days ago, Captain. I need accurate information on your former squad so that they may assist. For her safety.”

_Emotion: unknown._ His fingers had gone completely numb.

“Detective Santiago.” He heard himself say.

“Yes.”

“She - undercover.”

“Yes.”

And then the analytical detective in him took over, working through the pieces quickly. Santiago undercover - Peralta an emotional wreck - and the unmistakable looks of longing passing between them all those times he’d glanced up through his office window, of course, of _course -_

_ “ _ Well, for God’s sake,” he finally managed, “of  _course_ Peralta’s a mess.”

There was a vehemence in his tone, a kind of indignation, that he still can’t quite understand. He doesn’t know where it came from or where it went, because as soon as he said it he’d sunk back in his chair and pressed his fingertips together. Larson said something about emailing him - to which he replied with a hum - and let herself out of his office. And he’d driven to his exceptionally empty home and settled on this bar stool and he’s been trying to figure out why this lump is sitting so heavily in his throat ever since.

Cheddar lurches to his paws when the doorbell suddenly rings, barking and yapping loudly, and Ray shuffles out of his kitchen toward the front door. He’s not sure who he’s expecting - he’s also not sure that he _cares_ \- but when he opens the door and finds Jake Peralta standing on his threshold, hands buried deep in his jacket pocket, he freezes.

“Peralta,” his voice sounds strange in his ears.

“Yeah,” Peralta rasps. He peers up at Ray through swollen, bloodshot eyes and Ray is struck with the strangest urge to _protect._ “Sorry to...to barge in, or whatever. I just, I…” he trails and glances down at his shoes, kicking aimlessly at the doormat.

“Come in.” Ray says. And he does.

The house must be warmer than Ray realizes, because Peralta immediately unzips his jacket and hangs it on the hook by the door. He turns, his attention on Cheddar (who’s bobbing and weaving between his legs) and Ray’s eyes are immediately drawn to the dark red bruise-like splotch low on the detective’s neck, clearly visible above the neckline of his t-shirt.

The hickey, in the flesh. Or, _on_ the flesh.

Ray averts his eyes quickly.

They end up back at the bar, Peralta settled on the stool to Ray’s left, looking supremely interested in his cuticles.  Ray studies him closely: the bags beneath his eyes look almost as pronounced as they did a year ago at the end of his time with the Iannucci’s, he’s fidgeting almost constantly, he’s paler than Ray remembers, and his hand keeps drifting to tug on his badge hanging from his neck almost subconsciously.  “I dunno if you’ve heard -” he starts.

“Agent Larson visited me earlier in PR.” Ray interrupts. Peralta’s eyes flicker up to his briefly, before lowering again.

“Ah.” His voice is thick and it sort of seems to stick to his tongue. “So you...you know.”

Ray nods. They’re quiet for a moment, the only sound in the room Cheddar’s panting.

“It’s...not any of my business, but...the...the _hickey_ …” Ray finally says.

Peralta pulls a face, his hand lifting to cover the mark on reflex. “Shit,” he stammers, “I keep forgetting about it. God, I can’t _believe_ Larson saw it. It’s because Gina wasn’t there today, she kept reminding me yesterday -”

“Gina didn’t go to work today?”

“I got a text from her this morning that said ‘no captain, no rules’ and I haven’t heard from her since.” He shrugs dismissively. “Anyways, I...I’m sorry, it’s just that...she came to my apartment right after she found out she was leaving, and I know it’s unprof-”

Peralta freezes, and Ray watches a muscle jump in his jaw. Two years of working together allows Ray Holt an explicit understanding that the exact moment Jacob Peralta ever speaks the words “it’s unprofessional” Amy Santiago’s voice will unequivocally be echoing it in the back of his head.

They stare at each other for a beat. “I’m...sorry, Peralta.” Ray says slowly.

He reaches out tentatively and touches Peralta’s forearm where it rests against the counter in what he hopes is a supportive, consoling way. A brief moment passes - a moment pregnant with a tension Ray doesn’t understand - and then Peralta is in tears, forehead pressed against the counter top, sobs harsh and punishing as they rip through his chest.

Ray moves without thinking, pulling Peralta up off the counter and into his chest on instinct and Peralta’s arms slam against Ray’s back and Ray listens as Peralta falls apart.

“ _I miss her_ ,” Peralta manages to heave.

He thinks of Kevin, offering to stay home with him upon learning of his promotion. Kevin, whose kiss goodbye lasted just a beat longer than usual when Ray dropped him off that morning. “I know.” He says quietly.

“ _And I...miss...you,_ ”

Ray clenches his jaw, the tears he’s been fighting finally gathering in his eyes and spilling silently down his face.

* * *

Charles Boyle has a problem.

Gina would probably insist that he has _several_ problems. She’d list them all, tick them all off one by one on her long and dainty fingers, and even though he’s a human being with functioning legs and scraps of a sense of self-preservation, he would stand there and listen to them all.

(It’s one of his many problems.)

But the problem currently eating at him comes from an outside source: namely, his best friend in the whole entire universe, Jake Peralta.

When Charles started at the Nine-Nine, he had two empty desks to choose from - one near the CO’s office facing another already-occupied desk, and one single desk closer to the entrance of the bullpen. He chose the one closest to the entrance, mostly because it gave him a pretty good view of the others without Scully and Hitchcock in his direct eyesight (something wonderful he didn’t realize he’d done at the time). From this angle, he’d seen it all - every stolen glance, every teasing conversation, every lingering smile, starting from day one (which was almost a year later, on Amy’s first day). He’s been praying for Jake and Amy to get together for far longer than either one of them are aware of.

Which leads him to his current problem. The other desk - the desk that was _almost_ his - is empty for the first time in six years. And his best friend can’t stop staring at it.

Amy’s been gone for a week now, which has been...strange. It’s all strange. The last two weeks have felt like that part in all the rom-coms he loves where everything that could go wrong does go wrong and does so spectacularly. Amy’s gone. Holt’s gone. Dozerman is dead.

And the Vulture is currently shining his ostrich skin boots in the CO’s office.

Which brings him to the other side of his problem: every time Jake’s gaze drifts up from Amy’s empty desk, it lands on the Vulture through the open office window.

He still remembers the day they discovered the Vulture was their new captain (not just because it was four days ago). The anguish. The fury. The fear (okay, that was mostly his own fear, but he _swears_ he saw a hint of it in Rosa’s eyes, too).

“Where’s Santiago’s sexy ass?” The Vulture demanded. He’d been their captain for five minutes.

“Sir, Detective Santiago was selected by Captain Dozerman,” Terry paused and glanced up at the ceiling briefly, “to go undercover on a very high-profile case.”

“ _What?_ Half the reason I even accepted this dumb job was to make out with her in the evidence lock-up,” he scoffed and shook his head, and from the corner of his eye, Charles saw Jake’s hands curl into fists on top of the table. “Does that mean I gotta stare at _that_ dumbass all day long, then?” The Vulture asked, gesturing to Jake.

Terry frowned disapprovingly.

The Vulture made a noise of disgust. “Brief me on cases-in-progress, then, fart-munchers.”

He dragged an empty chair from the table in front of Charles and Jake to the front of the room and threw himself down in it, leaning back on the back legs and gazing up at Terry expectantly. “Well, we only have a few minor cases in-progress at the moment,” he started. “Hitchcock and Scully are handling most of those. Right, guys?”

“We’re not solving _anything_ until you bring our spicy ketchup back.” Hitchcock said loftily. Scully nodded enthusiastically.

“It was in the fridge for _three years_! You never even _used_ it! Y’know what, I’m _not_ having this conversation again.” Terry snapped. “Anyways, they’re _handling_ all the minor cases. The rest of the squad is gearing up to help with Detective Santiago’s case.”

“Where’s the file on that one?”

“We don’t have it. The information is strictly need-to-know.”

“Huh. Sounds like a pretty major case.”

Jake stiffened. “No.” He’d snapped. The Vulture glanced at him, something dangerous flashing in his eyes. “This is _hers_. You can’t take it from her and give it to your stupid buddies over in Major Crimes. Besides, it’s the FBI’s case. She’s working for the Feds now. You don’t have the authority to pull her off the case.”

“Nah, but I _do_ have the authority to pull _your_ big white ass off of it. Yours and everyone else’s in this precinct.” He stood, shit-eating grin spread across his face. “I’ll be back, losers.”

An hour later, the case was transferred to Major Crimes.

Jake’s been brooding ever since.

He hasn’t explicitly _told_ Charles yet, but Charles knows that Jake finally admitted his feelings to Amy. Charles would be totally lying if he said he didn’t run to the bathroom and whoop for joy into a wad of paper towels upon spotting the hickey on Jake’s neck, or that he didn’t spend the next twenty minutes wondering if Amy had hickeys, too.

He’ll just have to wait for her to come back to find out.

“Peralta,” the Vulture’s voice snaps. Charles blinks back to reality: the Vulture is hovering in the doorway of the CO’s office, glaring at Jake, who’s glaring right back in defiance. There’s a case file spread across Jake’s lap. “Hand it over.”

“No.” Jake says defiantly.

“I am your commanding officer and that was a direct order. Don’t make me ask again. Hand. It. Over.”

“ _No_.”

The Vulture’s eyes narrow dangerously. He storms out of the office toward Jake, who pushes back from his desk and clutches the case file to his chest like a talisman. What follows next can only be loosely described as a perverse game of tug-of-war, ultimately leading to the Vulture ripping the file from Jake’s hands. The whole precinct seems to pause as the Vulture quickly scans the first page - and scoffs.

“Thought I said not to work the Fumero case, Peralta.” He says quietly.

“You can’t stop me from -”

“Oh, but I _can._ If I catch you or anyone else in this precinct working on this case, I’ll have you demoted to beat.” Jake’s face twitches, like he’s fighting off the urge to gag. “That means if I catch Diaz workin’ the case, _you’re_ gone. If Boyle works the case, _you’re_ gone. Don’t test me, guy.”

The Vulture starts to walk away, and Charles thinks that might be the end of it, but then Jake’s leaping to his feet and following the Vulture and shouting. “Santiago’s my _partner,_ so if you think threatening me with a demotion is enough to make me stop working this case -”

“I don’t give a _shit_ what happens to Santiago! Maybe she even _dies_! That’d look _good_ on me, it would make me the grieving captain!” The Vulture shouts. A cold blast shoots through the bullpen, setting Charles’ heart in ice. “It belongs to Major Crimes now, got it? You’re not working this bull-crap case! We’re working misdemeanors only from this point forward, so get over it!”

There’s a moment that feels like a low-rumbling earthquake, and then Rosa’s out of her seat, restraining Jake. Jake’s _screaming_ a completely incoherent string of broken profanity, lunging and kicking and swinging at the Vulture, who watches with a satisfied smirk on his face from the doorway of the office several feet away. With surprising strength, Rosa manages to shove Jake all the way through the bullpen and into the elevators, and just as the doors begin to slide closed, Charles sees her reaching for her handcuffs.

“Back to work,” the Vulture calls when the doors close.

Charles waits until the Vulture’s head is bowed over paperwork before standing from his desk and scurrying down the stairs.

The secret door to Babylon is closed, but Charles can hear running water and the low murmur of Rosa’s familiar voice on the other side. “Jake! It’s me, Charles! From upstairs!” He calls, pressing his hands flat against the wall beside the door. “I’ve got a delicious chicken noodle soup upstairs in the fridge, I can pop it in the microwave and have it ready to go for you in five minutes! It does _wonders_ for soothing anxiety!” Rosa’s voice pauses, and he can practically _feel_ her rolling her eyes at him. “Jake, talk to me!”

The water suddenly cuts off. It’s quiet for another moment, and then the door slides open. Rosa’s face appears in the crack, looking uncharacteristically worried, and she shoves the door open just far enough for him to squeeze through.

Jake’s slumped down on the floor next to the toilet, knees drawn to his chest and arms hooked around the tops of his knees. His face is buried in his arms, and Charles can tell in the dim mood lighting that his hair is soaked. “Why’s his hair…?” He trails.

Rosa shrugs grimly. “I had to shock him out of it somehow.” She mumbles. They both glance at the sink; the faucet drips innocently.

Charles kneels down beside Jake and tentatively touches his best friend’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Jake,” he says solemnly.

“She’s not gonna die,” Jake says, his voice muffled but matter-of-fact. “She’s _not_.”

Charles and Rosa exchange a glance. “We know, buddy.” Rosa says, crouching down so that she’s level with them both.

“‘Course she’s not,” Charles says at the same time.

“The Vulture’s the _worst_.” Jake sniffles once, and then his head lifts. His eyes are bloodshot and bleary and there are tear tracks carving down his face, but something like a smile passes through his expression. “He’s worse than _Judy._ ”

“Oh...my God.” Rosa shakes her head. Jake laughs. It’s too quiet, too watery, too _broken,_ but it’s his. And Charles smiles, feeling for the first time in a week that there might be light on the other side after all.

* * *

Gina Linetti is, by nature, a selfish creature.

She knows this about herself, and frankly, there are worse things to be than selfish (that’s what she decided at a very young age). It’s not often that Gina does something inconvenient for the sake of another person. And, really, when she thinks about this, her motivations _now_ are selfish. She’s here because Jake’s moping all over the place and it’s driving her _crazy_.

She’s _not_ waiting for a meeting with Captain Holt because she’s concerned for Amy Santiago’s safety and well-being. _Nope_.

The whole meeting was surprisingly easy to set up. Holt’s new assistant, Geraldine, is usually a major pain in the ass to work with (she’s the one who keeps finding ways to send her Ranchville requests on Facebook, and it’s like, _hello,_ this is not 2009 anymore, _take a hint_ ) but she readily told Gina that Holt had an open appointment at three in the afternoon.

So here she is, 2:48 PM, playing Kwazy Kupcakes and jiggling her leg absently in the lobby outside the entrance to the Public Relations office.

She’s gotten so good at Kwazy Kupcakes that she actually doesn’t even have to really think about what she’s doing anymore; her brain works on autopilot, quickly shifting cupcakes around and knocking out row after row. It sort of defeats the purpose (to provide distraction from whatever she’s supposed to be doing at the time) but right now it’s letting her construct a battle plan, a bulleted list of reasons why Holt should choose Keith Pembroke to be the NYPD’s new mascot. Also, that the NYPD’s new mascot should be a donkey.

And, oh, while he’s at it, he should just come back to the Nine-Nine.

“Gina?” Geraldine’s voice breaks through the haze. Gina glances up over the top of her phone to find Geraldine smiling cheerfully, holding the door to PR open. “His two-thirty finished early, if you’d like to go ahead and get started!”

“Gladly.” Gina locks her phone and stoops to grab her purse before rising and striding into the PR office. She feels male gazes following her as she walks toward Holt’s office, so she tosses her hair over one shoulder and sends them all a sultry smile.

“Gina.” Holt says when he looks up to see her standing in his doorway. He pulls his reading glasses off his nose and lifts his head a little, which is Holt-body-language for _I’m thrilled that you’ve blessed me and my office with your gorgeous presence._

“Captain Holt! I’ve missed you!” She rushes around his desk and throws her arms around him, ignoring his tiny surprised grunt and wiggling from side-to-side. She must hold on for a beat too long, because he clears his throat.

“Uh - Gina -”

“Right, sorry.” She draws back, a breathless smile on her face, and even though he’s still obviously uncomfortable he nods slowly. _If we weren’t surrounded by my new colleagues I would hug you back._

“Have a seat,” he gestures to one of the chairs in front of his desk, and she moves quickly to perch on the edge of the one closest to the door. He closes the file spread across his desk and moves it to sit atop a neat stack of identical files, and then folds the arms of his reading glasses and sets them to the side as well. “What brings you to Public Relations?”

“Y’know, funny you should mention that. It’s actually about this whole NYPD mascot thing.”

Holt’s expression darkens infinitesimally.

“I know you guys have this whole pigeon thing picked out, but what if - and I’m just spit-ballin’ here - what if you guys change it to a donkey.”

He raises an eyebrow. “A...donkey.”

“Yep. Just a big ole’ furry ass. And before you say no, hear me out. You could make Keith Pembroke the guy who has to wear the suit.”

Holt narrows his eyes and sits back in his seat slowly. “Captain Pembroke? The new captain of the Nine-Nine?”

“Yeah, but believe me, I could write him an email that would make dressing up like a donkey sound _awesome_. Just let me sit here for twenty minutes and I’ll have him begging you on his hands and knees within the hour.”

“Gina, are you quite certain that this has nothing to do with the transferal of the Fumero case to Major Crimes?”

“ _Wha-a-at_? What’s that? I’ve never even _heard_ of that.”

“Gina.”

She manages to maintain her innocent smile for another three seconds before sighing and slumping down in her seat. “The Vulture’s a _nightmare,_ Captain! He’s _seriously_ the worst! He’s not letting any of the detectives work the case! He yelled at Jake the other day when he got caught working the case and he said he _didn’t care_ if Santiago dies!”

Holt’s eyes flash, but otherwise he does not betray any emotion. “If you have a formal complaint to lodge against your captain, I believe your time would be better-suited speaking with an officer in Internal Affairs.”

“Those _morons_ over at Major Crimes are gonna end up getting Santiago _killed_ , and then I’ll have no one to make fun of for taking quilt-making classes and Jake’ll be moping around the office for the rest of our lives and I can’t _live_ like that, Captain, I just _can’t_. You _have_ to come back to the Nine-Nine. You have to _help_ us.”

“Like I said before, if you have a formal complaint to lodge against your captain -”

“ _Captain_ -”

“Gina, I’m in _PR_. I can’t help you, no matter how badly I want to. I’m sorry. My hands are tied.”

 


	3. and i'd be the one you thought you'd find (b)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaaand here's the other half. i can't believe ao3 shamed me for how long this chapter was omg

Amy Santiago does not like change.

She lives her life according to a meticulous plan. Sure, there are empty brackets of space in that plan (like a five-year gap in which she will do something “heroic” to earn her Medal of Valor), but for the most part, she lives by a book that she has written. It’s a comfortable existence, so long as things go right.

Enter: Jacob Peralta.

He tends to throw wrenches in her plan left and right. It drove her absolutely insane in the first few weeks of their partnership; how can someone who thinks zip lining from building to building across clothes lines is a safe bet when pursuing a perp have a slightly higher arrest record than her?

Of course, it only took those few weeks for her to identify the fact that he actually _does_ have a method to his madness, but there are still moments she finds herself going to pieces because of something he’s done. How can someone who calls sour gummy worms and gummy bears mixed in a bowl _fun-ghetti_ be the reason her last relationship fell apart?

She had a plan. And in that plan, somewhere along the line, she has written down in her perfect looping scrawl, ‘ _go undercover_.’

Leave it to Jake to throw a wrench in _that_ part of the plan, too. God, having romantic feelings for another person is a real pain in the ass sometimes.

She _misses_ him. She can vividly remember waking at five in the morning in Jake's bed with his head on her chest, ear pressed over her heart. It damn near killed her to slowly and gently disentangle herself from him, and when she glanced back at him from his bedroom doorway one last time, he’d spread his arm across her side of the mattress, fingers loosely curled against the sheets, like even in his unconsciousness he was searching for her.

Amy’s not ashamed to admit that she cried, just a little bit.

It took a second of deep, even breathing before she was able to accomplish what she originally came to his apartment for. She found a pad of paper shoved in a drawer (after absently setting down her cardigan on the arm of his massage chair to free both of her hands) and a loose pen in one of his cabinets ( _seriously, Jake?_ ) and wrote:

_You don’t have to wait for me._

She actually had it ripped off the pad and was looking for a clear space on his counter to leave it when she stopped herself. _Don’t be an idiot._ She smashed the paper into a ball and shoved it deep into the confines of her purse to be burned later. Instead, she grabbed the pen and tried again:

_Water my plants and get my mail, please_

She stared at it for a long while. It felt too...cold. Too impersonal.

Especially considering what transpired between them just a few short feet away.

So very little hesitation, she drew a small heart at the end of the line. She hoped he would know what she was trying to convey - that no matter what happened while she was away, he had her heart. _All_ of her heart.

Her eyes burned and a watery laugh escaped her throat at the random mental image of Jake ruthlessly making fun of the heart she once drew at the bottom of a letter to her niece, who was away at summer camp at the time.

She placed the note on his kitchen counter near the sink and quickly fished her spare key out of her purse. Once the key was in place beside the letter, she stepped back, and tried to imagine what would go through his mind when he woke up and found it.

Her mind started spinning, so she quickly grabbed the notepad and scribbled one more note across the page - a note meant just as much for her as it was for him - and ripped the page off the pad. She thanked her lucky stars for the spare tape dispenser she keeps in her purse (she _told_ Gina it would come in handy some day) before taping the note to his front door. Her hand lingered on it for a moment longer before she slipped out and quickly stole down his hallway on the balls of her feet.

When she got to her car and glanced at herself in the mirror, her eyes were far too bright, her cheeks far too flushed, and her neck was dotted with marks from Jake’s kisses.

The note fluttered a little when the door eased shut, warning the forgotten cardigan: _don’t be an idiot._

Amy does not like change - which is why she objects so vehemently when her handler, Agent Larson, calls her two days into her new assignment to tell her about the change in precincts handling her case.

“You gave it to _Major Crimes_?” She hissed, eyeing the wall of her new shoe box apartment that she shares with Vinny Riviero, a low-level drug dealer with ties to the Fumeros. AKA, should she play her cards right, her ticket in. “Why the _hell_ -”

“The new captain made the request, Detective. He said the detective department was too understaffed to handle it.” Larson sounds tired.

“Bullshit. Who’s the new captain?”

“Um…” she hears papers rustling. “Pembroke. Keith Pembroke.”

“The _Vulture_?” Amy falls backwards on her mouldy couch, too in-shock to care about the thick cloud of dust that bursts up around her. “What the hell? I leave the Nine-Nine for _three days_ and -”

“He was highly suggested by Chief Madeline Wuntch.”

“Of _course_ he was. Listen, Agent Larson, with all due respect, I just...I don’t know that I’m comfortable continuing with this mission without my squad.”

“I understand your apprehension, detective, but I urge you to consider the possibilities of working this case through to the end. Undercover work is _always_ admirable on a resume.”

“No, I get that, but...but the thing is, I...um…” Amy exhales hard and runs a hand through her hair, nails scratching against her scalp. “Captain Dozerman doesn’t even really _know_ me, just ask him, he -”

“Captain Dozerman is dead.”

“ _What_?” She forgets to keep her voice down. “He’s _dead_?”

“He died of a massive heart attack four days ago. That’s why the Nine-Nine needed a new captain. Listen, Detective Santiago, I’m trying to be patient. But you signed a contract. You gave us your written word that you would do this. I’m sorry, but...it’s too late to back out now. Moving you out of your current position is too risky. It could blow our entire operation. I’m sorry.”

Amy sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose. “Yeah, I get it.”

“You’re doing a good thing, Detective Santiago.”

“Thanks.”

“I’ll speak with you at our next check-in, but please email us with any major updates.”

“‘Kay.”

“Have a good evening, detective.”

Amy ends the call and lets her phone - the burner phone the FBI gave her - fall to her lap. Even though her apartment is small and pretty decently furnished (aside from the ancient couch), it feels far too empty. She wonders if it has anything to do with the fact that this apartment has never housed Jake’s impossibly huge presence; she swears just his voice alone could stretch the walls out until they’re bursting at the seams.

Riviero’s apartment is quiet, too. She stares at the wall between them for a moment, willing a brilliant plan to come to her, but nothing does. So instead she flops down face-first on the couch and groans into the cushions.

Silence.

And then, a knock. Quiet, but clear.

Amy pushes up on her elbows and stares, more alert now than she’s been since leaving the precinct for Jake’s apartment.

She stands and subconsciously pulls the neck of her sweatshirt a bit higher, despite the fact that every mark Jake left behind is either hidden beneath the sweatshirt or else well-disguised beneath a thick layer of makeup. It’s just habit at this point.

She opens the door only a few inches and peers out at the unfamiliar man on the other side, shifting from foot to foot uncomfortably. “Hey,” he says upon spotting her. “Look, uh, this is...weird. But, um. I’m your, your neighbor.” He points toward Riviero’s apartment. Amy follows his finger, before her gaze flickers back to him. “I kind of overheard your conversation just now, and...y’know. I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Oh,” she straightens and opens the door wider, and his eyes automatically dart to the interior of her apartment over her shoulder. “Uh, thanks.”

“Yeah. You’re new around here, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Yeah, I thought I saw you movin’ in the other day. I’m Vinny.” He extends his hand toward her. “Vinny Riviero.”

Amy squares her shoulders, inhales deeply, and takes Vinny’s hand. “Melissa.”

“You got a last name?”

She decides in a split-second; Larson’s still waiting on her to pick a name for the fake rental forms, after all. “Iannucci.” The name rolls off her tongue easily.

She watches the recognition blaze through his eyes. “You don’t...you’re not tellin’ me that you’re part of the Iannucci _Family_?”

“Yeah. I am.”

There may come a time in the near future where she regrets what she’s just done, but in the moment, she rides a wave of triumph. “You mind if I come in, Melissa?”

She smiles, heart hammering in her chest. “Not at all.”

* * *

Doug Judy has been called many things in his life.

A swindler. A hustler. A player. A genius. A helluva musician. A thief. The list goes on and on for miles, and there’s not an item on that list that doesn’t make him smile impishly.

But he’s never been called _predictable_.

He never really plans his moves before he makes them. The sweet whisper of that temptress, Fate, lures him on to his next haunt, and he follows her call on the wind.

And it’s Fate that brings him back to New York for the third time, right at the end of September, when the air is just starting to crisp around the edges. It’s Fate that sends him strolling down Fifth Avenue with his hands buried deep in his pockets. He whistles, and smiles, because Fate has assured him that this is precisely where he needs to be.

He’s so busy taking in the familiar sights of his city that he doesn’t see the duo coming toward him on the sidewalk until he’s barreled right into the woman. She shouts and falls backwards and Judy leaps out of the way to keep from accidentally crushing her fingers.

“Oh, man, I’m so sorry, I didn’t even -” He freezes.

He recognizes the brown eyes staring up at him, wide with panic.

Before he has a chance to say anything, though, a pair of hands land roughly against his chest and shove him backwards, right into a wall. “Watch where you’re going, dude!” This man is unfamiliar. Amy Santiago scrambles to her feet behind him, and Judy blinks. He wonders if they’re related.

“M-my bad, dude,” Judy stammers, glancing at Amy for help. She merely stares at him.

The guy pinning him to the wall mutters something in Spanish and steps away from Judy, but not without one last shove. Judy stays motionless, his back against the wall, as Amy starts to walk away with the guy. He stares after them, all the way around the corner, and only then releases the breath caught in his chest.

It takes him a moment to push away from the wall, and he’s still standing on the sidewalk trying to decide of chasing after her would be worth it, when Amy suddenly reappears. She sprints down the sidewalk toward him, hair whipping back behind her in the wind, and skids to a stop in front of him, chest heaving and eyes wild.

“I don’t have time to explain right now,” she pants. “Call me Melissa if you see me again. Where are you staying?”

Fate makes his heart jump, so he tells her. She nods and takes off again, back in the direction from which she came.

She shows up at his hotel door around 11 PM that same day. “Do I still have to call you Melissa?” He asks when he opens the door, half-joking.

She doesn't even crack a smile. “Yeah. From now on, yes. Call me Melissa.”

There’s a tiredness in her eyes that he’s never seen before. She looks as though she’s gone quite some time without a decent night’s rest, shuffling past him into the hotel room with shoulders slumped and head hung low. “You...you okay?” He asks, and his voice trembles without the his usual scaffolding molded from humor.

She sits heavily on the couch on the far side of the room. “No. Well, yeah, but. No.”

He drags one of the ornate dining room chairs over and parks it three feet in front of her before sitting and leaning forward so that his elbows are planted on his knees. “What’s going on?” He asks, trying to keep his voice as low and soothing as possible.

Tears spring up in her eyes, but she blinks them away. “I’m undercover right now. Have been for a month. Or, almost a month. That’s...that’s why you have to call me Melissa. Melissa Iannucci.”

Iannucci. He had a buddy once, Frankie, who did some business with the Iannucci’s. They were into some _hard_ shit.

“You’re goin’ around tellin’ people you’re part of the Iannucci Family?” He asks incredulously.

“I mean, yeah. I told Vinny that I was their arms dealer. And that I was on the west coast overseeing a deal when the wedding bust happened, which is why I’m not in jail. He bought it,” she shrugs.

He leans back slowly, digesting the information.

“You alone?”

Her gaze stays fixated on the corner of the coffee table to his left. “Yeah,” she finally says, and her voice is hoarse and distant.

It takes about an hour, but she tells him everything with only minimal coaxing. Captain Holt being transferred. Captain Dozerman randomly choosing her for the mission, and then promptly dying the next day. Captain Vulture pulling her squad off her case.

She is well and truly _alone_.

“And the goon you were with earlier…”

“Vinny. He’s my neighbor. He’s helping me get into the cartel. He doesn’t _know_ that, but...yeah.”

“How long’ve you been undercover again?”

“‘Bout three and a half weeks.”

“And you haven’t heard from your squad since you left?”

“No. Contact’s forbidden, especially since they’re not actually on the case anymore. I check in with my FBI handler and she relays information to Major Crimes, and vice-versa. She’s the only person outside of you and the cartel that I’ve had any contact with.”

The words seem to weigh heavily on her as she speaks them; her shoulders sag and her head drops a degree or two.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he hears an echo: _Rosa, Rosa, Rosa…_

“What if...I help you out.”

Amy looks him in the eye for the first time in forty-five minutes. “What?”

“Like, I could...I could go undercover _with_ you. I’m already a criminal, so it’s not like it’d be hard to convince them.”

“But...you steal cars.”

“Yeah, but crime is crime, baby! Y’know who said that?”

She shakes her head, bewildered. “Who?”

“ _You!_ I overheard you once while I was in the interrogation room waitin’ on my boy Peralta, and that really stuck with me through the years!” Something small changes - her head twitches, her brows draw together slightly, her nostrils flare - and he pauses. “I bet...I bet I could even get you in contact with your squad,” he says slowly. “On the down-low, of course.”

“That’s _way_ too dangerous -”

“You’re tellin’ me you _don’t_ want me to go see Peralta?” _And Diaz?_ His mind automatically adds.

She jerks back a little, like he’s burned her, and her eyes narrow. “Y’know, he told me about you. How you’re slippery, how no one should ever believe anything you say. Why should I even trust you?”

“I have a buddy who did a little side business with the Iannucci’s. On the side, y’know. Wasn’t directly involved with the Family, at least not enough to get an invite to the wedding. I bet if you can convince him that you’re part of the Iannucci’s, he can get you in with the Fumero’s. He’s got eggs in lots of lil’ baskets.”

“I know the Iannucci case backwards and forwards, I studied it for six months while Jake was away,” she says under her breath. Her eyes blaze with indecision. “You still haven’t given me a solid reason for trusting you.”

“Peralta’s my best friend, girl. I saw the way he looked at you. I heard the way he talked about you. I like messin’ with him, but I would never do anything to someone he cares about that much.”

More tears spring up in her eyes, only this time, one spills over and streaks down her face. She wipes it away quickly on the back of her hand. “It’s...it’s highly against the rules,” she says.

“Yeah.”

“If the Vulture finds out, there’s no telling what he’ll do.”

“I ain’t afraid of some dude who calls himself ‘the Vulture,’ A- _Mel._ ”

She stares at him a moment longer. “How would you even get in to the Nine-Nine to talk to them? They’re gonna arrest you on the _spot_ -”

“Exactly.”

He’s in an interrogation room in the Nine-Nine ten hours later.

He waits patiently, examining his reflection in the two-way mirror and humming under his breath. His heart is pounding with excitement, because finally, _finally_ , he’s going to have a chance to use his slippery weasel skills for _good_.

It takes Peralta fifteen minutes to appear. The interrogation room door bangs open and he trudges inside, hair mussed, skin pale, bruises under his eyes, and fingers gripping a paper cup full of coffee like a lifeline. There’s a case file tucked beneath his left arm and his feet scuff along the floor. “Listen, I _really_ don’t have time for your usual bull-crap today, okay? So if you could just cooperate -”

“But Peralta -”

The case file tucked beneath Peralta’s arm suddenly skids across the tabletop, soaring right over the edge, and the coffee cup slams against the table so hard three droplets fly up from the tiny mouth hole and land on the table. Peralta’s got both hands planted on the table, leaning forward, and Judy has honestly never seen such desperation and fear and fury in another man’s eyes. “You ever hear about the Iannucci Family while you were out being a _snake_?” He asks, and the words themselves seem to quiver.

The memory of Amy sitting on his couch is so vivid in his mind. “That’s actually what I’m -”

“ _I’m_ the one who got them arrested. I spent _six months_ undercover, getting almost all of them put away in prison _forever_. Except _now_ my worst nightmare is coming true, because I just found out from one of my informants that _apparently_ there’s an Iannucci here in New York, active on the drug scene and probably looking for _me_.”

Judy almost snorts - because, well, he’s not really _wrong_ \- but Peralta suddenly grips the back of the empty chair across the table and falls into it with a loud huff. He slumps over the table, head bowed so low that Judy can’t see his eyes. It’s suddenly very difficult to breathe.

“And the stupid frickin’ _Vulture_ is my captain, and _Holt_ is gone, and...and _Amy_ is gone,” Peralta’s voice breaks over her name, and Judy feels his heart fissure. Peralta buries his face in his hands and scrubs his eyes. “How did everything fall apart so fast?” He wonders aloud.

Judy finds himself leaning forward, and if it weren’t for the cuffs pinning him to the table, he would reach out and touch Peralta’s forearm. “Peralta,” he says carefully. Peralta doesn’t respond. “It’s not the real Iannucci’s.”

There’s another moment of nothing, and then Jake’s head lifts a fraction - just enough for Judy to see his eyes. “What?”

“It’s not the real Iannucci’s.” He can’t stop the grin that spreads across his face. “It’s your girl _Amy._ She’s usin’ the name to try to get in with the Fumero drug cartel.”

Peralta’s arms fall limply against the table. There’s a look of wild disbelief on his face - one Judy can’t really blame him for - and his mouth is opening and closing rapidly. “How...how do you know this?” He manages to gasp.

“Boy, I _talked_ to her! Ran into her on the street yesterday! She came by my hotel room last night and told me everything, and now I’m workin’ for her!”

He didn’t think it possible, but somehow Peralta manages to look even more shocked. “You _work for her_?”

“Well, technically I work for _Melissa Iannucci_ , but _yeah_. I’m here ‘cause I’m helpin’ y’all, too!” He grins and spreads his hands as wide as the handcuffs will allow. “I’m a liaison, baby!”

Peralta seems to struggle to remember how to form words for a second. He does that weird thing again where he opens and closes his mouth repeatedly, and then, in a gasp: “ _She’s okay?_ ”

Judy feels himself soften. “Yeah, man, she’s good. She, uh,” he clears his throat, because his voice is doing that wobbly thing it does without his scaffolding, and he has to clench his jaw to keep himself from making a stupid face to compensate. “She said to tell you that she misses you, you know. Said it right before she left last night.”

He’s still got that pained look on his face, but he’s nodding and his mouth is staying shut, so Judy guesses that’s a good sign.

Except he keeps nodding. And keeps nodding. And shows no outward sign of ever stopping again.

“Uh, Peralta? You gonna say anything?”

No response. More nodding.

“You need a minute or something? ‘Cause I’m down with talking to Rosa if you need to go, like...chill.”

His movements are jerky and choppy when he stands, and just before the interrogation room door closes, Judy hears Peralta mutter, “Santiago, you _brilliant bastard._ ”


	4. i had a dream about a burning house (a)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and this one, by contrast, is the /longest/ chapter i have written so far at 19 pages so it's definitely getting split in half lmao

They agree to meet with her at seven in the evening in a room on the private second floor of a little Italian restaurant near Times Square, and when Amy walks inside, it’s just like every mobster movie she’s ever seen. Frankie leads the way, nodding to the maitre d’ and weaving through the tables toward a darkened hallway off to the right. She feels Vinny on her heels and her heart in her throat. The smell of pasta sauce assaults her from every angle, and she’s fairly certain she’s going to throw up.

Judy came back from the Nine-Nine with a smile on his face and a spring in his step. He told her that he’d seen Jake - that he’d talked to Jake - and, with a suggestive wiggle of his eyebrows, told her that Jake missed her, too.

She didn’t have to dwell on it long before Frankie called Judy to set up a meeting with her. He was startlingly easy to convince that she was a mysterious long-lost arms’ dealing daughter of one of the Iannucci brothers; Frankie was thrilled to “finally” meet her.

Frankie got her a meeting with the bosses. _All_ the bosses. Right here in this restaurant.

The one upside? She might just be able to get into the cartel on her own merit (or, on Melissa’s merit) rather than having to engage in congress with one of the bosses, like the original plan.

They pass the bathrooms and the door to the office and then Frankie stops just outside a non-descript unmarked wooden door at the very end of the hallway, fishing through his pocket. He produces the key and wrestles with the handle for a moment, quietly cursing under his breath, and then -

\- the door opens up to a narrow staircase that creaks and groans loudly in protest when Frankie starts jogging up. Amy grips the handrail tightly as she follows at a slightly slower pace, the rusted metal catching the callouses on her palms worn from wielding too many guns and cuffing too many criminals. The narrow walls begin to close in, and if it weren’t for Vinny two steps behind her she’s pretty sure she would collapse right there on the staircase.

But Melissa doesn’t have claustrophobia. Melissa has an important business meeting at the top of these stairs. And Melissa doesn’t have time for a panic attack.

_You’re Melissa, you’re Melissa, you’re Melissa_ she chants in her mind every time she scales another step. Her shoulders loosen and her face sets in a cool emotionless stare similar to the one she's seen Rosa give perps countless times before, and by the time she reaches the top of the staircase, she can feel her hips swing with each step she takes and a new invincible kind of confidence ooze from her very pores.

The room itself is twice the size of Melissa’s entire apartment, and the table is set in the shape of a square with only three sides. There are two people wearing waiter’s uniforms that stand in the far corners, hands folded behind their backs, and all along the table are men shoveling various types of Italian food into their mouths. The lighting is dim and the air is thick with cigar smoke and the stench of alcohol; boisterous laughter and conversation drown out any semblance of order.

If she didn’t feel like she was in a mobster movie yet, she _definitely_ does now.

One of them, a guy with black hair thinning at the crown of his head in a pressed black pin-striped suit sitting toward the middle of the table facing them, held his hand up upon spotting Amy, Frankie, and Vinny. There’s a half-smoked cigar between his index finger and his middle finger - Amy recognizes the label. Her grandfather used to smoke that same brand when she was little. In his other hand, he slowly lowers a fork loaded down with fettuccini noodles.

The mayhem of the room dies down slowly, until every eye is either on the man with the cigar or on Amy, Vinny, and Frankie.

“Frankie,” Cigar Man says, and his voice is hoarse and whispery and she’s sure that somewhere on the other side of New York Jake is _losing his mind_. “You brought guests?”

There’s a note in his tone that makes her stomach curdle uncomfortably. “Vinny’s Melissa’s neighbor. He’s done good work for us in the past.” Frankie explains as Vinny shifts nervously beside her.

Cigar Man nods slowly. “Melissa,” he says, pronouncing each syllable carefully. Despite her best efforts, she feels heat pool in her cheeks. “You’re an Iannucci?”

She takes what she hopes is a confident step forward. “Yes.”

His eyes narrow. “Blood or marriage?”

She thinks briefly of the whispered conversation she had on the phone with Agent Larson. “Blood.” She says, her own argument echoing in her head. _It’s not like it’d be that far-fetched for one of the Iannucci’s to have a daughter they don’t know about._

“I never heard about you when I was dealing with the Iannucci’s.”

“I didn’t spend a lot of time with the family. I was their arms’ dealer. I was out on the West Coast overseeing a shipment during the wedding. I think I’m the only one who made it out.”

“You and Maliardi. You ever meet Freddy?”

She swallows hard and clears her throat again. “No, uh...our paths never crossed.” She says, careful to keep her voice even.

Cigar Man grunts. “He’s workin’ for us now,” he gestures vaguely around the table. “I got him workin’ the European market.” He shifts in his seat and leans forward, leaning on his elbow and taking a drag from his cigar. “Frankie tells me you specialize in big weaponry.” He says with an exhale thick with smoke.

She arches her eyebrow and sneers the best she can. “Uh-huh.” She says, crossing her arms over her chest.

Cigar Man appraises her for another moment. “We’ll need to see evidence of your skills before we can seriously consider going into business with you. You understand.”

“Of course.”

He turns his head to take another drag and waves her off with his free hand. “Get back to me within the month and we’ll talk.”

He turns his attention to the man to his right, speaking in hushed tones, and the conversation picks up again around the table. Frankie turns back toward the staircase, motioning for her and Vinny to follow.

Amy is surprisingly calm on the walk down the staircase, already planning the call she would make to Agent Larson at first opportunity. Frankie holds the door at the bottom of the staircase open for her and Vinny, and Amy walks down the bathroom hallway with her head held high. She feels a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth for the first time in over a month - because, assuming she manages to get this to work the right way, she has a chance to put _Freddy Maliardi_ away along with every single person sitting in the room she just left, and what better way is there to make all of this up to Jake than by putting the one that got away in prison?

The restaurant is a little more sparsely crowded now, several couples having paid and left while they were upstairs, which is why her eye is automatically drawn to the only familiar face in the room.

Jake’s staring at her from the other side of the restaurant.

She can see the tension in his face - his clenched jaw, his flared nostrils, his pale skin - and for a second, everything else falls away. It’s just her and Jake.

And then she careens into the side of an unoccupied table, drawing every other eye in the room toward herself. She recognizes now that he’s sitting across from Charles, who probably dragged him here in an effort to distract him from whatever hell has broken loose at the precinct. She feels Vinny’s hand on her back, hears him murmuring something, but she shrugs him off quickly. “M’fine,” she mutters back, staring hard at the floor and taking an exaggerated step around the table she’d just rammed.

She glances up one last time before quickly exiting the restaurant, and the look in his eye (like that of a starving man watching the last loaf of bread on earth be tossed over a cliffside) haunts her dreams for the next three weeks.

* * *

The first time it happens, it’s a complete accident.

Jake goes to her apartment for the first time two weeks after she leaves, early in the afternoon because he could no longer stand being in the same building as the Vulture, and the moment he opens the front door he’s hit with a soft, billowing wall of her perfume. It’s sweeter here, where it's pure and not diluted with the smells of the precinct and of New York, than what he's used to. It’s so pure, in fact, that once he gets the door closed behind him he just stands there in her entryway for a beat or two with her mail in his hands and soaks it all in.

Her apartment is as grandma-esque as it was the last time he was over here, he realizes with a smirk. He drops her mail on her kitchen counter and walks through her living room slowly, fingertips trailing along the doilies and polished wood surfaces. There are a few framed photographs he recognizes here - ones of Amy with various combinations of her brothers and parents, and one with her entire extended family in which he can never actually spot her without her helping him out - and he lingers on his personal favorite.

In the photograph, Amy’s reclining in a lawn chair, smile bright and blinding against a low-lit backdrop of a rolling grassy hill. Her brother, Manuel, is seated on the grass at her feet, leaning back against the arm of her lawn chair, guitar slung over his shoulder. His right hand is slightly blurred over the strings and his head is tilted back in a silent laugh. Jake _loves_ this picture. It never fails to make him smile to see her so happy.

As he ventures further into her apartment, he begins to notice other small changes. A new blanket folded over the arm of her couch, a new vase on the window sill, a new porcelain figurine on her bookshelf. He wonders briefly where on earth she finds these things (like is there a roving grandma convention that comes through Brooklyn every year that he’s never heard about?) before dropping onto her couch. A burst of smell rises up around him; he closes his eyes and inhales deeply.

When his eyes flutter open again, they’re immediately drawn to a cluster of new picture frames on the side table to his left. He feels himself grinning in spite of the two-hundred pound weight that’s been sitting on his chest for the last two weeks as he takes each photo in. This seems to be her ‘photos with friends’ section; Rosa and Gina are in a few, and there’s one with Charles and one with Terry, and one with the whole squad. But the one that catches his eye - and makes his heart stop - is a framed and very familiar selfie toward the back of the cluster.

It’s the one with her chin on his shoulder.

He picks it up gingerly and struggles to remember how to breathe. He can’t remember ever sending it to her, which means she must have sent it to herself from his phone while he wasn’t looking at some point. He clenches his jaw and blinks back tears before carefully replacing the frame on her side table, resolving to go print his own copy and to frame it and put it somewhere in his apartment before she comes back.

For a while, Jake just sits on her couch. He unfolds the new blanket and drapes it over himself and looks around, studying everything he can see. Now that he’s really looking past all the doilies, he recognizes touches of her Cuban roots throughout the place; a mosaic made of small tiles painted with worn pastel colors, a glass jar full of antique dominoes he remembers her talking about on one of the upper cabinets, a worn wooden box carved ornately and centered on its’ own doily that he thinks might be an old cigar box. He sinks back a bit further into her cushions and feels his eyelids get heavy. This is the closest he’s felt to her since falling asleep with her that night, and it’s easing some of the anxiety that has been tying his stomach in knots.

When he gets up for a glass of water to water the plants, he keeps the blanket with him, wrapped around his shoulders like a cape. He toes his shoes off by the door (and actually takes the time to line them up neatly under her little table) and trots around her apartment in his socks, pouring half the glass in each pot he finds. He has to walk through every room three times before he’s satisfied that he hasn’t accidentally missed any.

There’s a breath of a moment in which he merely stands in the middle of her living room, blanket draped over his shoulders. His eyes are dry and stinging and his eyelids are as heavy as they were the one time he spent 36 straight hours in the precinct. And yet he knows that if he goes home - if he lays down in the bed where it happened and tries to drift off - he’ll end up wide awake all night once again.

And Amy has one of the most comfortable couches he’s ever sat on. Honestly. It’s the kind that’s firm enough that he’s not sucked into the cushions, but not so firm that his butt goes numb if he sits for too long. It’s a good couch, a practical and sturdy one, a couch made for throwing oneself down on at the end of a long day. He does just that, just flings himself down face-first into the cushions, and he groans when his senses are assaulted once again by the scent of Amy’s perfume. There’s still an ache in his chest, a hole where his heart should be, but the tenderly ragged edges of that hole don’t feel as ragged here.

He has no memory of drifting to sleep, but suddenly he’s jolting awake to the sound of his phone alarm going off on the table beside her front door. In his disorientation, he rams into her coffee table and nearly trips over the edge of her rug, but he manages to shut the alarm off before her neighbors start pounding on the walls for him to keep it down.

He stands there for a moment, staring around her apartment, and runs a hand through his hair.

So, the first time Jake sleeps at Amy’s apartment, it’s a complete accident.

The second time it happens...it isn’t an accident.

He’d managed to shake Charles after quickly exiting the restaurant, hell-bent on getting to a private place in which he can fully freak out. He’d seen Amy, looking too thin and too surrounded by thuggy strangers, and she’d seen him, too. All the pain that he’d just been figuring out how to cope with came rushing back and he’d just - he needed to get out.

Charles dropped him off at his apartment with an anxious promise to check on him later and Jake tore up to his apartment without so much as a backwards glance. He’d grabbed his keys, fingers already curled around Amy’s spare, and sprinted back out to his own car. He distantly realized that Charles was gone but his head was spinning and he couldn’t quite tamp any of them down as he started his car and floored it. The thought hadn’t even fully solidified in his head before he’d lurched to a stop outside Amy’s apartment complex a few minutes later.

He flings the front door of apartment open and closes his eyes and this time, when he inhales, he feels his lungs laboring beneath an onslaught of emotion.

This is just too much for his heart to handle.

Her door closes with a soft click behind him and he shuffles inside, no longer caring about how severely his shoulders slump or how low his head hangs or the fact that he’s already started sniffling and he hasn’t even shed a tear yet. The peace and tranquility he’d felt here almost two weeks previously is back in full force, only this time it’s dissolving him, breaking him down, reducing him to rubble.

He’d known, objectively, that she was making progress. He and Rosa met with Doug Judy three days previously on a bench in Central Park and he’d told them that he’d hooked Amy up with one of his contacts - some guy named Frankie Mendoza - and that Frankie was in the process of getting her an in-person meeting with the big bosses. He’d nodded along as Judy talked, and he’d even felt excited for her, thrilled that she was getting somewhere (and that was only _partially_ because of the fact that the faster she got through this assignment, the faster she would come home).

But that was before he actually _saw_ her. She’d been on the opposite side of the restaurant, but the moment his eyes had landed on her he’d been teleported back to that night. He’d felt her hands in his hair and her lips on his neck and honest to God it’s a miracle he didn’t suffocate right there in the restaurant from seeing her again.

He throws himself down on her couch again, ripping the blanket up and over himself before impact, and stares at the wall. He sits back up again after a moment, though, reaching over her side table pictures for the one with him in it. He sets it up on the coffee table directly across from him and falls asleep staring at it.

It becomes a regular thing after that. He spends every other night (or after a particularly bad day at the precinct, two or three nights in a row) sleeping on her couch. He starts packing clothes in his car so that he can change on the way to work, until one day he just brings the clothes up with him and changes in her guest bathroom. It goes on like that for a while, until one evening about two months after she’d left.

He heard a key in her door and he’d frozen on her couch, half-way through the motions of putting his Chinese takeout box down on her coffee table, staring at the door through impossibly wide eyes. He hears the door open and then there are shuffling footsteps - he can’t tell exactly how many, but he’s fairly certain it’s more than one person - and then, a voice.

“Jake?” Charles calls tentatively.

Jake chews his mouthful of orange chicken quickly, trying to clear his mouth in order to answer, but he’s not fast enough. Charles and Rosa round the corner and pause, taking in the sight of him. And, yeah, it looks pretty bad. He’s in his pajamas on Amy’s couch, blanket wrapped around his shoulders, viciously chewing a mouthful of obviously-ordered-to-that-address food, sitting in front of her television where her recordings of _Marimar_ are playing with the English subtitles turned on at the bottom of the screen. He finally manages to swallow his mouthful of chicken just as Rosa crosses her arms over her chest and arches a questioning eyebrow at him.

“I can explain,” he says.

Charles and Rosa stare at him.

“Um…” he glances at the other two boxes of takeout on the coffee table, at his half-drunk beer on the coaster to the left, at the framed selfie set up on the table beyond all of that, and deflates. “No, I can’t,” he says softly.

Charles immediately starts looking around the apartment, disappearing around the doorway of Amy's guest bathroom. “How long’ve you been living over here?” Rosa asks, moving further into the apartment. She drops into the armchair to the left of the couch as he slides his box of food onto the table and readjusts the blanket to ride a little higher on his shoulders.

“I’m not _living_ over here.” He says defensively. “I mean, I know I’ve got food delivered here, and, okay, yeah, I brought a six back over and it’s in her fridge, but I’m _not_ living here.”

“You’ve got clothes in here.” Charles calls from the bathroom.

“I water her plants and spilled on myself and changed in her bathroom with my spare car clothes.” He says, mentally high-fiving himself for thinking so quickly.

“Your _toothbrush_ is in here,” Charles’ head appears around the doorway, holding the red toothbrush aloft.

He looks from Charles to Rosa, desperately trying to come up with a logical response, but nothing comes to him. “Okay, _fine._ I sleep here sometimes, but only because Santiago’s got, like, the most comfortable couch on the planet. Seriously, come sit on this couch, you won’t be disappointed.”

“Peralta.” Rosa says sharply. He automatically slumps. “Why are you sleeping on her couch?”

“Because...because,” he picks at a loose thread in the blanket, refusing to meet either one of their gazes. Because Charles has come out of the bathroom and Jake can already feel the pity in his eyes and Rosa’s staring at him like she just caught him rifling through Amy’s underwear drawer and he just can’t deal with either one of those. “I...okay, here’s the thing. Um…”

“Just say it.” Rosa says, her voice a degree softer.

“I miss her.” Jake mumbles. He sees Rosa’s chin lift and he sees Charles’ head bow from his periphery, but he keeps his attention on the loose thread. “And...she asked me to water her plants and to get her mail and stuff, and...and being here makes me feel sane again? Because I’m, I’m losing it without her, guys. I _miss_ her.”

“This is why I never want to catch feelings for anyone,” Rosa mutters. “It’s the _worst_.”

Charles and Jake both stare at her for a moment before Charles rolls his eyes. “Jake, listen,” he says as he hurries around Rosa to crouch down beside the couch, “it’s perfectly normal to miss someone when you’re in a situation like this.”

“I know.” Jake says uncertainly.

“You’re in love with her, she’s in love with you, and you’re being kept apart by -”

“Whoa, whoa, Charles, wouldja cool it with the L-word? We had  _ one night _ -”

“ _Wha-at_?” Rosa does her drawn-out teasing laugh, leaning forward in the armchair to swing a fist at his knee. “You guys _boned_?”

“Rosa, please!” Charles snaps. “They  _ made love _ -”

“Oh my God!” Jake interrupts loudly. “How did you guys even get  _ in here _ ?”

“Santiago gave me her spare key,” Rosa shrugs.

“No, she didn’t, because  _ I  _ have her spare key.”

“Alright, fine. She gave me her spare key two years ago and I made a copy.” Once again, Charles and Jake both stare at her. “What? It’s for emergencies or whatever. She’s got a key to my apartment around here somewhere.”

“Amy knows where you live?”

“No.”

“Okay, alright, enough, guys. I’m fine, really. It’s not a problem, I just sleep here because it’s easier to sleep here than it is at my apartment.”

“Because you guys boned there?”

“Get out.”

* * *

Larson sends Amy back to the Fumeros with a small moving truck full of AR-15s, AK-47s, and more shotguns and pistols than she’s ever seen in her life. Each weapon comes equipped with a state-of-the-art tracking device embedded in the very skeleton of the gun and impossible to detect unless the one doing the detecting is looking for it specifically. Amy can’t help but to feel as though the positive side-effects of getting the tracked weapons into their hands are massively outweighed by the overwhelmingly negative ones.

“We’re going to lose a few battles in this, Detective Santiago,” Larson had said grimly to her from where they stood to the side of the van, watching a dozen FBI agents create a human conveyer belt to get case after case of weaponry into the van. “But we _will_ win the war.”

Amy tries not to think of how many casualties will be dealt through these very guns.

Frankie had given her an address to a warehouse down near the docks off of Fourteenth Street. She pulls the truck over on the curb on the right side of the street, blinking up through her window at the building before her. She isn’t sure if it’s a byproduct of the bleak, cloudy day progressing over her head or if the warehouse just looks that creepy and abandoned, but either way, she feels the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.

“This place looks like Scooby friggin’ Doo,” Judy mutters from the passenger’s seat.

“You’re staying in here with the truck until I come back out.” She reminds him. He nods, face set in an uncharacteristically serious mask. “Don’t talk to anyone except Vinny or Frankie. I need you calm and I need you quiet. Got it?”

“Yes ma’am.” He salutes. His eyes flicker to something over her shoulder. “You got this, Mel,” he says softly as she turns to look.

Vinny comes loping out of the side door, looking far too relaxed for her liking. “They’re all in there,” he says as soon as she throws the driver’s side door open. “Y’all good?”

She takes a deep breath to steady herself, and when her feet hit the ground, she’s already slipped into her Melissa mentality. “I’m good.” She says cooly, kicking the driver’s side door closed and twirling the keys around her finger by the key ring. “Doug’s staying in the car.”

“I should warn you,” he murmurs as they approach the building, “one of the bosses is _very_ interested in working with you. He’s been real vocal about getting you back in.”

“Which one?”

“Archie. You’ll like him, he’s a funny guy.”

“He’s not the one who was smoking the cigar the other night, was he?”

“Nah, that’s George. He’s one of the actual Fumeros. Last one still living, actually. He’s, like, top dog.”

Their muttered conversation cuts short when he opens the door for her. She’s momentarily overwhelmed by the stench of rainwater and mold and mildew, but she blinks rapidly and lets Vinny usher her inside without comment. The warehouse is as large and cavernous as it appears on the outside; whoever used it before it was abandoned cleared everything out, save a few shelves way down against the wall to her right. There’s an uncovered staircase leading up to an exposed second floor, lined with several closed doors. She absorbs all of this in a second, because her gaze automatically lands on the small mob of people clustered together in the middle of the floor directly in front of her.

She recognizes George, puffing away at yet another cigar, standing near the center of the group. Every eye turns toward her, and despite her best efforts, her heart shoots straight into her throat.

She relaxes when she spots Frankie on the outskirts of the group, a kind and supportive smile on his face.

“Were you able to get the shipment?” George asks. His voice echoes here, unencumbered by the sounds of a restaurant or her heart pounding in her ears. She swallows thickly and nods. He studies her a moment longer, eyes narrowing just slightly, and then he wordlessly gestures to the side door.

She escorts him and two others from the group, along with Vinny, back to the van. Doug jumps out once he spots them coming, and he and Vinny get the back door thrown open. They step toward her, flanking her on either side, and she tries to look unaffected by the hundreds of guns just to her left. One of the men George brought out hauls himself up into the back of the van while the other turns his back and keeps watch up the street.

“This is...impressive.” George says, taking another drag from his cigar. “Was this your normal haul for the Iannuccis?”

“Something like that. I threw in a few extras for you, though. As a thank you for your consideration.”

The man keeping watch on the street casts a glance back at her over his shoulder, and she meets his gaze briefly. He looks like Terry, if Terry were covered in tattoos. There’s a gleaming quality to his dark eyes - a hunger - that makes her stomach twist.

She looks away quickly, feigning distraction by the man inside the van, who has pulled one of the AR-15 cases off the shelves the agents loaded them onto earlier and has opened the case. He pulls the weapon out and examines it, twists it around in his hands and eyes the trigger mechanism. There’s a moment, a pause, in which she imagines him finding the tracking device and turning toward her and Doug and Vinny to spray them full of bullets from that very gun, but then he lowers the gun and nods to George.

“Miss Iannucci,” George says as he reaches for her hand, “welcome to the family.”

He presses a kiss to her knuckles, the cigar clenched between his teeth on the side of his mouth, and Amy does her best to disguise her grimace as a smile.


	5. i had a dream about a burning house (b)

They’re getting roughly nowhere with this case.

Rosa hasn’t seen or heard from Judy in several days. While it doesn’t surprise her, considering the last thing they’d heard was that Amy was supposed to transport a moving truck full of automatic weaponry to some warehouse, it _does_ irritate her; Jake gets stressed when they have to go more than a couple of days without an update on Amy. Rosa’s fairly confident that Amy’s doing just fine - maybe lying low, maybe undergoing whatever orientation program comes along with being inducted into an international cartel ( _God_ , what if there’s a binder), or something like that - but still, she worries. For Jake’s sake, mostly.

It’s going on day number five and the Vulture has just assigned Jake to the file room once again. That’s the eighth time this month, she notes as she adds another tally to the Post-It she’s been keeping on the base of her computer monitor. Part of her wonders if it’s because he senses Jake’s been sneaking around but hasn’t been able to come up with any concrete evidence to prove it, so as his own form of punishment he quarantines Jake. The first few times he did it, Jake tried to argue. Now, he just stands up from his desk with a quiet sigh and shuffles off toward the file room, shoulders slumped in defeat.

She’s never seen him quite this bad before.

Objectively, she knew things were going to be different when she learned that Amy had gone undercover. But, really, she guessed that at the most Jake might be a bit quieter than usual for a month or so, until he adjusted to the absence. Afterall, that’s what Amy was like when Jake went undercover. What she didn’t expect was to have to physically restrain him from hitting The Vulture in the face right there in the middle of the precinct at the idea of Santiago not surviving this case. She didn’t expect to find him living in Amy’s apartment.

She _didn’t_ expect him to be so hopelessly in love with her.

There’s a part of her - a tiny, well-repressed part of her - that wonders if Amy’s faring better at navigating the aftereffects than Jake is. She wonders if Amy lies awake at night chasing sleep, desperate to escape the memories and subsequent feelings that seem to permeate every aspect of Jake’s current existence. More than once she’s looked down at her phone to realize that she’s absently pulled up her text thread with Amy, and in the new dialogue box, she’s typed _You ok?_

She never sends it.

The Vulture casts one last glance over the tops of their heads before retreating back into his office and slamming the door. Rosa waits until she hears him grunting from lifting his stupid kettlebells before pushing up from her desk, snatching her phone, and trudging over to Charles’ desk. Charles is busily scribbling something down on his case file, but the moment Rosa perches on the clear corner of his desk, he looks up at her.

“We’ve gotta do something about Peralta.” She says, keeping her voice low.

A look of anguish crosses Charles’ face. “I’ve tried _everything_ , Rosa,” he says, shaking his head forlornly. “I’ve taken him to all his favorite restaurants and I’ve sat through all his favorite movies. I even took him to that carnival that was out on Coney Island the other day. Every time I thought he was having fun, I’d look over and he’d be staring at a picture of him and Amy on his phone.”

“Yeah, it’s his background now.” She shakes her head, wishing she didn’t know that, wishing that she didn’t care as much as she does. “I know he’d be better if we were allowed to work on this case, but -”

She catches herself. She was about to say something about how maddeningly frustrating it is that Judy still hasn’t gotten back to them, but she remembers - Charles and Terry don’t know. It’s not that they don’t trust them, it’s just the fewer people who know, the better. Amy’s safer that way, and Jake’s job is far more secure. It’s just the logical choice.

“But the Vulture won’t let us,” Charles finishes for her, nodding grimly. She deflates with her next exhale and nods along, ignoring the wave of guilt that twists in her gut. “Yeah. I mean, I’m not gonna lie, I’m really worried about her, too. We can’t even get updates from Agent Larson about how she’s doing. I can’t even _begin_ to imagine how Jake must feel not knowing _anything…_ ”

Rosa swallows and nods along, desperately trying to block his words. She hadn’t thought about that - about Charles and Terry and Gina worrying, too - and as she turns her head away she tries to imagine what it would be like to have gone this long without even a hint of an idea of Amy’s current well-being.

Her eyes drift to Terry, hunched over his computer as always. There’s something new about his posture, though, a tiredness to his usually cheerful gaze, and it reminds her of the zombified stares teenagers who’ve worked retail too long give her when she browses around them.

Like he’s been beaten into submission.

Her heart clenches.

“I’m gonna go try to talk to him,” Rosa interrupts.

She glances down at Charles, and he’s nodding enthusiastically. “Good idea. He always looks a little better after he comes back from lunch with you.”

Another bubble of guilt works its’ way up her throat, but she chokes it down and pushes off of his desk.

Jake’s toward the back of the room, mindlessly shuffling papers and files around in no apparent order. He doesn’t move when he hears her entering the passcode. “One of the boxes fell apart,” he says defensively, still not looking around.

“I don’t care.” She barks. Finally, he glances back over his shoulder, and whatever speck of alertness he’d had when she first enters evaporates upon recognition that she isn't the Vulture come to harass him. “I think we need to tell Charles and Terry about Judy.”

“ _What_?” He turns to face her fully now, incredulity dripping off his frame. “Is that a joke? S’this one of those weird Diaz comedy hours I’ve heard so many rumors about?”

She arches an eyebrow at him, and the little humor in his eyes vanishes. “I’m being serious. I think they deserve to know.”

“I thought we decided that the fewer people who know about this, the better -”

“Yeah, well, I’ve been thinking about it more and I realized _that_ was a stupid plan. The more eyes we have on Judy, the more brains we have working the bits and pieces of the case that he brings back, the more we might be able to help Amy.” Jake frowns and furrows his brow, studying the beat-up desk that has been his involuntary second home. “Besides...Gina and Charles and Terry are Amy’s friends, too. And they haven’t gotten a single update on her since she left.”

His gaze flickers up to her. “I didn’t think of that,” he says softly.

“Neither did I.”

He looks away, blinking rapidly, and she’s fairly sure she can see tears in his eyes. “Are we bad people for not telling them?” He asks, voice a choked whisper.

“No. We did it for good reasons.”

He nods, still not meeting her eye, and reaches forward to blindly grab at a file on the self to his left. He flips it open and rustles through the papers, seemingly just to have something to do with his hands. “Okay,” he mumbles. He flips the file closed and twists the spine of it in his fingers. “Okay, we’ll tell them.”

Rosa feels her phone buzz in her back pocket. She grabs it and unlocks the screen, and the moment she absorbs the name above her newest text, her eyes go wide. “It’s Judy.”

Jake practically vaults over the desk, getting way too close for comfort over her shoulder, but for once she doesn’t care. They read the message simultaneously:

_Central Park. Our bench. 20 mins._

“Can we tell them after this?” Jake asks quietly.

“Yep.”

* * *

Amy’s never really been a fan of first dates. She understands, in concept, that first dates are what lead to second and third dates and eventually to relationships, which she is much more comfortable with. But first dates play a game with her anxiety that she just can’t stand. What is she supposed to talk about? What is she supposed to eat? How is she supposed to sit? Will they care if she balls her napkin up in her hand rather than keeping it spread across her lap? How often can she get away with checking her reflection on the back of her spoon for lipstick stains on her teeth?

All in all, not the most pleasant experience.

Of course, her anxiety is spiked tenfold before her first date with a mobster.

She gets ready alone and her hands shake so badly that the zipper of the dress Doug bought for her gets caught on the material of her bra twice. It takes ten minutes of deep, even breathing before she’s finally able to get the zipper all the way up, and when she counts the beats in her head, she hears it in Jake’s voice.

She wonders, briefly, if she’ll ever get to get ready for a first official date with Jake.

It takes twice as long as usual before she finally deems herself ready (partially because of the fact that her hands still won’t stop trembling, but mostly because Melissa wears a _lot_ more makeup than Amy is used to), and just as she’s tucking her phone into her purse, she hears a knock at the door.

Archie’s wearing a nice jacket, and he smiles at her and whistles when she opens the door. “You look _hot_ ,” he says as he looks her up and down.

In her mind’s eye she sees herself scurrying back inside and hiding under her blankets until Archie forgets who she is completely, but she resists. “Thank you,” she says shyly.

“Ready to go?”

“Y-yeah, lemme just -” she turns to close her front door and lock it, and then Archie’s offering her his arm and leading her down the hall and she can’t shake the feeling that she’s being marched to her death. “Where are we going?” She asks.

“It’s a surprise,” he says cryptically.

They end up back at that same Italian place because apparently the staff knows the whole cartel and because of that they’re able to eat and drink for free. He orders the nicest bottle of wine they have and Amy chews nervously on the end of a breadstick.

“Listen,” Archie says quietly once their waiter is gone. He leans closer to her and she fights off the impulse to lean away. “You are one of the sexiest girls I’ve ever laid eyes on.”

She lifts her chin, trying to imagine how Rosa might respond to a line like that.

“I mean, when I first saw you upstairs, I couldn’t take my eyes off ya. You gotta good thing goin’, y’know?”

“Yeah, uh,” she clears her throat. “I’m, I’m...I guess I’ve never really thought about it.”

He hums low in his throat. “I mean it, baby girl.”

“Don’t call me that.” She snaps. His eyes widen, and she immediately regrets her entire life. But Melissa roars to life inside her. “I’m not your damn baby girl. And if you’re expecting anything to come outta... _whatever it is_ that you’re trying to accomplish here, I guarantee you that you’re not getting it by objectifying me all night. I’m an international criminal, not a damn slab of meat. Show some respect.”

He’s quiet, just staring at her, and from her peripheral vision she can see his hands clench to fists beneath the table. But a moment later his facial expression softens to that of a warm smile, and he chuckles. “Alright, alright, chill out,” he says, reaching for the wine bottle their waiter has just brought to them. “If respect is your kink, I can try to get into that -”

“It’s not a kink. You’re either gonna treat me as an equal - which I _am_ , by the way, now that George has agreed to go into business with me - or I’m going home.”

A muscle in his jaw twitches as he pours her a glass. “Fine. _Partner._ ”

Her breath catches in her throat and the feral part of her brain begins screaming because no one ( _no one_ ) gets to call themselves her partner except Jake.

But he’s not calling her his partner. He’s calling _Melissa_ his partner. And Amy’s going to have to learn how to deal with that.

They clink glasses and as their eyes meet, she feels an uncomfortable heat rise up the back of her neck. He looks at her like a project. Like there’s something to be done.

She drains her glass.

* * *

Terry Jeffords is a pretty reasonable man. He doesn’t ask for much out of life - just as long as his wife and daughters are comfortable and his fridge is stocked with yogurt, well, everything is alright.

Of course, the last couple of months have felt less alright despite the contentment of his family and the yogurt in his fridge.

He’s had plenty of time to think about it from where he sits at his desk every day. He answers emails and contemplates it all, turns it over and over again in his head until he’s examined it from every possible angle. And, by the end of month three, he’s identified a few sources:

First, Captain Holt is gone. The strong sense of leadership that held this admittedly whacky precinct together has vanished, and the precinct has, predictably, begun to fall apart. Second, the Vulture is their new captain; any falling apart the precinct would have done naturally in Holt’s absence has suddenly increased pace a thousand times over. Third, Detective Santiago is gone. Now there’s no whip-smart detective to interrogate perps, no studious worker to finish the paperwork quickly and efficiently, no kind-hearted friend to quip and banter with Peralta on a daily basis. Which leads him to the fourth source: Jake himself.

Terry doesn’t like getting super involved in the personal lives of the detectives now that he’s a sergeant, especially when their personal lives begin overlapping and interweaving with each others’. He finds that it’s best to just keep his head down and to block out as much of the chatter and gossip as possible; plausible deniability is his best friend. But no matter how hard he tries, he can’t stop himself from overhearing a few things.

The morning after Santiago left, Peralta trudged in thirty minutes late. He’d thrown himself down in his desk chair and sat there without even bothering to turn on his computer. Terry furtively watched him flip aimlessly through a few of the case files spread across his desk, watched him scribble something down on one, watched him throw the pen back at the pen cup and miss so spectacularly that the pen ended up skittering all the way across Amy’s now-empty desk and onto the floor on the other side. Had Terry still been a detective, he would have stood immediately and pulled Jake into an interrogation room to privately check on him. But he’s not, so he doesn’t.

It’s Gina, of all people, who ends up coming to Jake’s rescue. The moment Terry hears her hickey comment, he clears his throat and shifts a little closer to his computer screen and does his best to tune them out by playing The Hustle in his head.

(He has to stop when his shoulders begin shimmying of their own accord.)

He still hears their voices, but they’re like a quiet buzz. Just when he thinks he’s safe, though, he hears Gina say it:

“I’m glad you got to say goodbye.”

Despite his best efforts to remain unattached, Terry’s head whips up. He watches Jake sputter for a second, eyes wide and overcompensating, and the pieces suddenly fall into place.

“Oh, Jake,” he whispers.

And Jake has been a wreck since then. Although, Terry will give him credit - he’s trying. He really is. He gets his work done and he’s mostly stopped arguing with the Vulture (which Terry has been very keenly aware of ever since he found out that he’d missed Jake’s violent outburst due to a meeting with Wuntch). The Vulture is still giving him hell on a daily basis, but Jake seems to be keeping his nose to the grindstone, and honestly, Terry’s impressed.

He’s been a cop long enough now to have seen his precinct go through a lot of change. He’s seen the highs and the lows and the mids in between, so he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that his precinct is in another low. It’s because of his knowledge and experience that he knows another high will come again someday, and this will all feel like a distant dream.

He knows this, but he still finds himself wondering what the squad will look like by the time that happens.

His phone buzzes with an incoming call, and when Terry looks down at the screen, he’s pleasantly surprised to read _Cpt. Ray Holt_ scrolling across his screen. He casts a glance up into the captain’s office; the Vulture is flipping through a magazine with his back turned toward the window.

“Captain Holt!” Terry says quietly once he’s successfully hidden in the break room.

“Good afternoon, Sergeant Jeffords.” He hears Holt’s blessedly familiar voice on the other line. “It is very good to hear from you.”

“And you, sir,” Terry says, unable to wipe the grin off his face.

“I am calling because - and perhaps this is none of my business - I wanted to ensure that you are aware of the fact that two of your detectives are currently in Central Park with a known criminal, and they do not appear to be making any move to arrest him.”

Well _that_ wipes the grin right off of Terry’s face. “S-sir?”

“Diaz and Peralta are in Central Park meeting with Doug Judy. Were you already aware of this?”

“No - no, I wasn’t, sir. Judy was brought in by a beat cop a little while ago and Peralta questioned him, but he had to let him go due to lack of evidence. Are...I mean, is Jake -”

“Peralta does not appear to be speaking to Judy with his usual amount of...contempt.” Holt says. “The conversation appears to be perfectly civil. They’ve even looked at something on Judy’s phone.” Terry hears something rustle, and suddenly he has a vision of Holt crouched down behind a bush somewhere in Central Park. “Sergeant, I cannot help but to wonder if this has anything to do with the case Detective Santiago is currently working.”

Terry snaps his mouth shut. He recalls Rosa and Jake hurrying out from the file room where Jake had been banished half an hour ago, grabbing their keys and wallets from their desks, and then hurrying toward the elevator. “We’re going to lunch.” Rosa had barked by way of explanation. There was something manic about the gleam in Jake’s eyes.

“Have they seen you yet, sir?” Terry asks as he moves back toward his desk.

“No, they have not. Should I make my presence known?”

“Not yet, sir. If you don’t mind, will you just keep an eye on them? I’m coming up there to deal with them myself.”

“Of course, Sergeant.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Ooh, where ya’ going?” Charles asks from where he sits working on paperwork in his desk as Terry gathers his jacket and keys.

“I’m headed to Central park to bust Jake and Rosa for talkin’ to Doug Judy.”

Charles’ jaw drops. “ _ What _ ?” He gasps, his pen falling from his fingertips. “They told me they were going to Cafe Brazil!”

“They lied, Boyle.” Charles’ head drops, utter disbelief radiating from his face. “You wanna come with me to confront them?”

He perks up instantly. “Oh yeah,” he says grimly. “They were supposed to bring me pancakes.”

They ride in tense silence, aside from an occasional angry grunt or mutter from Charles. Terry does his best to tune him out by focusing on the impassioned speech he’ll have to give in the middle of Central Park while he cuffs Judy. It’ll be about responsibility and respect, and it’ll be damn good.

Terry loves a good impassioned lecture.

He senses something significant has happened between the end of his phone call with Holt and now, when he approaches the bench and spots Rosa and Jake and Holt sitting on the bench together. Judy is nowhere to be seen, and Rosa has an arm around Jake’s shoulders.

Jake looks as though he has just been told he has three hours to live.

“What’s...what’s going on?” Terry asks when he’s within earshot. Rosa and Holt both glance up at him, but Jake doesn’t move.

“Look, I know this looks bad.” Rosa starts gruffly, “but could you...could you just hold off on the lecture? Please?”

She casts a worried glance at Jake. Terry looks to Holt automatically for guidance, but Holt’s expression is unreadable.

“Jake?” Charles asks tentatively, crouching down in front of Jake.

“ _ Amy _ ,” Jake breathes.

Charles looks up at Holt, who sighs. “In order to gain quicker access to the Fumero Drug Cartel, Detective Santiago has engaged in a romantic relationship with a man believed to be a very high-ranking member of the cartel. He...also possesses a history of domestic abuse.”

Terry clenches his jaw as Charles makes a little noise of anguish in the back of his throat. “Doug Judy’s been working with us to keep us updated on Amy’s wellbeing,” Rosa mutters. “We hadn’t heard from him in a week because - well, they’ve been busy. But he told us that Amy went on a date with a guy named Archie last night. He didn’t know his last name. But he said that Amy mentioned the violent past.”

Jake clenches his jaw and shakes his head slightly, staring right through Charles. Rosa shifts a little closer to him in response, and Terry faintly realizes that this is the most physically affectionate he’s ever seen Rosa be with a human being she isn’t dating.

“This mission is far more dangerous that I was originally aware of,” Holt says after a moment or two of silence. Everyone except for Jake turns to look at the thoughtful gaze on Holt’s face. “And Gina brought it to my attention last week that Captain Pembroke is not allowing anyone from the precinct to work the case. Is that accurate?”

“Yeah, it’s accurate. That’s why Jake and I have been sneaking around. He’s threatening to demote Jake to beat if he catches anyone working on the case. Judy came to us after he ran into Amy on the street a few weeks into her mission and offered to be an liaison for us. We didn’t tell anyone because we didn’t want to risk what might happen to Amy if Judy got exposed.” She glances down at Charles, a small crease appearing between her brows. “I swear we were gonna tell you, dude. We decided right before Judy texted us asking to meet. We didn’t have enough time. We were gonna tell you when we got back to the precinct.”

“Rosa, please, it’s fine,” Charles says dismissively.

“So what you’re saying is that Doug Judy is your  _ only  _ line of communication with Amy right now?” Terry asks skeptically. Rosa nods. “And you guys trust him with such a huge thing?”

“What other choice do we have?” Jake’s voice breaks as he lifts his head and squints up at Terry.

Terry blinks down at Jake. Jake, the one who has been hunting about Doug Judy for well over five years now. Jake, the one who once swore that if he had the choice between arresting Doug Judy or Bin Laden he’d actually arrest Judy first. 

Of course, if there’s one person in the world he cares about more than he hates Judy, it’s Amy.

What really gets him is that Rosa - ever-calm, ever-rationally-emotionless Rosa - looks up at him with as much conviction as Jake does.

“Alright, I’m in.” Terry hears himself say.

“Me, too.” Charles echoes. The corner of Rosa’s mouth twitches.

“As am I.” Holt says. Every eye darts to him immediately, and he shrugs. “If Madeline is going to fire me eventually, I’d rather it be over something that matters.”

Charles releases a breathless chuckle, and Terry smiles down at his former commanding officer gratefully. “Alright,” Terry says, clapping his hands together and rubbing them excitedly. “Where do we start?”

* * *

Vinny takes to spending a lot of time in Amy’s apartment. He’s almost constantly there, lounging on that ancient couch and watching TV. Despite the fact that it makes it very difficult for her to contact Agent Larson, Amy finds that she rather likes having him around. He’s an oddly comforting presence.

Of course, Frankie and Doug spend a lot of time there, too. But not nearly as much as Vinny.

They start a tradition around her fourth week undercover, wherein Vinny would order some kind of food and they would spread it out on the ground and watch movies together. Of course, they would chat a little too back in the beginning, which is how the tradition eventually evolves into them having a picnic on her living room floor and just talking.

It’s the closest thing to friendship she’s experienced since leaving Jake’s apartment.

Amy learns that Vinny is twenty-three and that his family is from Cuba (she had to really fight the urge to ask which part and whether or not he’d ever heard of her grandparents, but she resists). He’s single, but he always seems to be texting some girl named Jessica. Once she’s sure they’re more comfortable with each other, Amy tries to bring her up.

“So who’s this Jessica girl you’re always talking to?” She quips. He glances up at her from his phone, eyes wide and mouth full of pizza. “I see you texting her all the time, and I wanna know!”

“She’s not - it’s not a big deal,” he says, dropping his pizza slice on top of the box between them and ducking his head in embarrassment. “It’s not even a thing, okay? Quit freakin’ out!”

“I’m not freakin’ out, _you’re_ freakin’ out right now! Tell me about her.”

He sighs and rolls his eyes. “She’s just a girl, I don’t know,” he mumbles. “She...works across the street at that little grocery store.”

Amy furrows her brow, desperately trying to recall seeing a girl there that he might be referring to.

“Y’know, the one...the one who always wears those pink earrings?”

“ _Oh_! Vin, she’s _cute_!” He rolls his eyes again and shakes his head, face flushed a brilliant shade of red. “Why don’t you ask her out?”

“S’not that easy,” he mumbles. “Workin’ for the Fumeros...it ain’t exactly steady hours, y’know? Plus, this job is way too stressful without having to worry about a girl too.”

Amy nods slowly.

“What about you, huh? You and Archie have been on a couple of dates, how’s that going?”

She makes a noncommittal noise. “It’s...it’s just business, really. It’s not like that.”

“Right, yeah, okay. Business with  _ benefits _ , maybe.” She chuckles and nods and glances down at her feet, and a crease appears between his brows. “Hey, is everything alright?”

“Fine. Everything’s fine. It’s just, um...Archie’s...great. But I just don’t think...I don’t think it’s gonna go anywhere besides a business partnership. I’m not gonna fall in love with him, I don’t think. You’re right, you can’t really do that with jobs like these. Makes leaving people behind much harder.”

He’s quiet as he contemplates her words, and then: “You ever have to leave anybody behind?”

She blinks, and behind her closed eyelids she sees kind, warm eyes and a dimpled chin and a contagious, ever-present smile. Suddenly, the hem of her t-shirt is very interesting. “I - yeah. I did.”

Vinny’s looking at her sympathetically. “That must’ve sucked,” he says quietly.

For a moment, she’s overcome by the familiar dull ache in her chest. She can still see his eyes boring into hers through the darkness of his bedroom, can still feel his lips on her neck and his hands - his hands, everywhere, all at once, like if he didn’t touch every inch of her he would die. The weight of his head on her chest, the stretch of his fingers toward her retreating figure, the way she’d sobbed all the way to the FBI building because it felt as though she’d just cut a limb off of her body.

“It does,” she says hoarsely, turning her head away as tears spring up in her eyes.

“You wanna talk about it?”

He’s light and happiness and joy. He’s kindness and softness and gentleness, he’s intelligence and bull-headedness and bone-dry sarcasm. He can sense any little thing out of the ordinary about her at any given time. He can make her feel a thousand times better with just a word or a brief touch, sometimes even just a look. He drives her insane and he sits up with her until three in the morning watching cheesy eighties movies and eating greasy pizza on her couch every time she gets dumped. He’s her best friend, her whole heart, and she misses him more than anything in the entire universe.

“He - he always made me s-smile,” she chokes, and her voice breaks on the last word. Tears streak down her face and she quickly wipes them away. “I’m sorry, I’m being ridiculous, I just -”

The silence hangs between them for a moment. “It’s okay,” Vinny says softly.

She tries to imagine Jake and the dopey smile of encouragement he’d always shoot her way over their desks. “Yeah, I...I guess it is.”

* * *

Gina isn’t entirely sure when the social hierarchy changed around the precinct, but it has, because four months after Holt and Santiago leave, she discovers that she is officially last in the order people who find out about major things.

She’s behind _Charles_.

“You guys _teamed up_ with Doug Judy and Captain Holt to work Santiago’s case behind the Vulture’s back? And you told _Charles_ before you told _me_?”

Rosa releases a sigh bordering on a growl as Terry pinches the bridge of his nose. They’re sitting across from her in the interrogation room, having just finished explaining (for the third time) where they’d all been for the last forty-five minutes (leaving her alone with Hitchcock, Scully, and the Vulture, which is basically her own special version of _hell_ thank you very much).

“We _told_ you, _none_ of this was planned.” Terry says gently as he lowers his hand. “It’s not like we excluded you on purpose. Charles and I didn’t even know what was happening until we got to the park, and honestly I probably would’ve invited you, too, if I’d known where you were!”

“For your information, Terrance, I was playing Words with Friends in Babylon.”

Terry furrows his brow. “Thought you said Words with Friends was for nerds who _have_ no friends,” Rosa grunts, shooting her a warning look when Terry looks away.

“Did I say that?”

“Yeah, I specifically remember you saying that, because Santiago was playing that game and you were making fun of her for it.”

Gina purses her lips. “I don’t recall.”

It’s pretty much a complete lie. She remembers that vividly because of the way Jake had looked at Amy while Gina was making fun of her - like she’d hung the moon, like she’d lit each individual star, like she was the source of all the love and beauty in the world, and, okay, playing the game makes her feel...closer.

To Santiago.

Which means that Six-Drink Amy was right - they’re  _ friends. _

And to make matters worse, Gina actually kind of...misses her.

And Gina would much rather lie than admit to that.

“Look, the point is,” Terry interrupts, “we’re sorry that you’re the last one to find out, really, we are. But we need your help.”

“Oh, do you? You come to me on your knees, begging for my assistance after disrespecting the good Linetti name?”

“This is hardly what I’d call begging.” Rosa deadpans.

“All we’d need you to do is to just...distract the Vulture. Make sure he doesn’t find out what we’re doing. Oh, and also, keep Scully and Hitchcock distracted. If they find out, they might accidentally let something slip.”

“You’re _seriously_ asking me to babysit Tweedle-Dee, Tweedle-Dumb, and Tweedle-Jackass? Do I look like the main character of a movie about sixth graders?”

“Gina, listen. This is possibly the _most_ important part of this case. Because if the Vulture finds out that Doug Judy is a rat, he might expose him, which would put Amy in serious danger. The - the _entire outcome_ of this case depends on the Vulture not finding out.” Gina leans back in her seat, watching Terry’s eyebrows rise and fall emphatically as he talks. “We can’t do this without you, Gina.”

“I’ll do it...if Rosa asks me nicely.”

Rosa glares at her fiercely across the table. “Will you keep the Vulture from finding out about this?”

“Ah-bup-bup - I didn’t hear a please.”

Terry kicks Rosa under the table, and Rosa growls. “Will you  _ please _ keep the Vulture from finding out about this?”

Gina smiles and claps her hands together. “I will help you, but please know that you owe me majorly. Both of you.” They both roll their eyes. “I mean it. I’m talkin’ buying me coffee every morning for a week at _least_.”


	6. you were stuck inside i couldn't get you out (a)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings: alcohol abuse, physical abuse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lmao here's..............this

Vinny Riviero is a good person. His mama always said so; she’d whisper it in his ear in the grocery store, she’d shout it over the fence to the neighbors, she’d declare it proudly at all his student-teacher conferences.  _ Such a good boy, mijo _ , she’d say as she carded her fingers through his hair. His chest would swell up with pride and he’d smile for the rest of the day.

He’s a good person, down in his core. He just got mixed up with the wrong crowd. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He grew up in a bad neighborhood. His behavior was that of reflection of those boys he went to school with rather than an inherent need to act out or defy authority. He’s a good boy, who’s done bad things.

That’s what he heard his mother cry on the phone the night he left home for good at just eighteen years old.

It’s always sort of stuck with him through the years. It’s what he tells himself to soothe his conscience after stealing beer from the convenience store around the corner from his apartment. It’s what he tells himself after selling dime bags of cocaine to the teenagers down the block. It’s what he tells himself the night he knocks on his new neighbor’s door with every intention scoping her place out for potential valuables to steal and sell so that he could afford his next month’s rent.

Of course, that plan fell by the wayside the moment he learned her name. In an instant, he’d decided that she was his ticket up with the Fumeros, which was, in turn, his ladder up to a better life.

At least, that’s how it started. He’s a good person, who understands that sometimes doing bad things is necessary to take care of oneself. He never expected to get to know Melissa, or to come to care about Melissa, but after a while he finds himself sharing parts of himself with her that he’s never shared with anyone before. He tells her about Jessica, and she tells him about the guy who got away.

She still can’t say his name. Every time he asks her about it, she gets all funny and distant and changes the subject.

Vinny is a good person - which is why he’s knocking ( _pounding_ would be a more appropriate word, actually) on Melissa’s door at nearly 2 in the morning after waking up to the sounds of her sobbing through the wall.

“Mel?” He half-shouts, ignoring the sounds of doors down the hallway creaking open to locate the source of the commotion. “Open up, it’s me!”

He hears a hand fumbling with the lock, and then with the doorknob, and then -

\- her face is mostly shrouded in shadows when the door cracks open, but the little sliver of her face illuminated by the dim hallway lights is lined by at least two thin trails of blood. “ _Mel_?” He hears himself gasp.

She opens the door the rest of the way and pulls him inside by the wrist. As he stumbles in, she quickly closes and locks the door behind him, and he suddenly realizes that there are two new deadbolts on her door. She turns once everything is locked and leans back against the door, breathing heavily, refusing to look him in the eye.

Blood is trickling down the side of her face from somewhere up beyond her hairline, and the area around her right eye is bruised and scraped. In the area revealed by the shallow dip of her shirt, he can see the outer edge of a dark splotch on her collarbone - another bruise, maybe - and he swallows thickly when she raises that arm to wipe either tears or blood (or a combination of the two) off her face and winces.

“What the hell happened to you?” He breathes.

“I’m fine. It’s much worse than it looks, I swear.”

“Who did this to you?”

Melissa glances away, a deep line forming between her eyebrows. “I-it doesn’t matter,”

“You, you were at a deal with...Archie,” he blinks rapidly. She stares at him, chest heaving. “Did...did  _ he  _ do this to you?”

“He was drunk,” she whispers.

He can’t speak for a moment - the breath is stolen out of him like a swift punch to the gut. “Where the hell was Doug? I thought you took him with you -” he hears himself choke.

He stops when he notices that she’s shaking her head. “He had to bail last-second. He said something about a Pontiac, I don’t -” she waves her hand dismissively. “I went alone.”

He studies her for a moment. “Okay, well, you’re  _ never  _ doing that again.”

“Vin -”

“I can’t believe he  _ beat you _ !” A rage unlike anything he’s ever experienced before surges through his veins. He begins pacing, because he’s pretty sure if he doesn’t move he’ll end up punching a hole right through their shared wall. “What the fuck, Melissa, what the  _ fu _ -”

“You can’t tell  _ anyone  _ about this,” Melissa says firmly. Vinny freezes, staring at her incredulously. “I’m  _ serious _ , Vinny. He’s a boss -”

“I don’t care if he’s the  _ king of England _ , he can’t  _ beat you _ -”

“He’s a  _ boss _ and he can have us both  _ killed _ .”

Vinny’s voice dies in his throat.

Melissa’s mouth is set in a thin, grim line. “Look,” she says softly, gesturing for him to sit on the couch. He goes, and she follows, perching right on the edge, so close her knee touches his thigh. “Look,” she starts again, “I really appreciate how concerned you are for me. Really, I do. And I’m sorry I woke you up, I just...I was in shock, and...and the panic kind of hit me a little too late. It really doesn’t hurt nearly as bad as you think it does.” Vinny clenches his jaw and shifts a little, working the tension rippling through his body out of his legs, and Melissa reaches to where his fists are clenched against his thighs. She worms her fingers into his palm and squeezes reassuringly. “I know that what I’m about to say doesn’t make _any_ sense to you right now, but please believe me. I know _exactly_ what I’m doing. I’m going to be okay. Okay?”

He frowns at her, but her eyes (still swollen and bloodshot) bore into his earnestly, and he realizes he’s nodding. “Okay,” he says hoarsely. “But you have to promise me something.”

“What?”

“The next time this happens, assuming it happens again...come straight to my apartment. I’ll patch you up.”

Her mouth twists into a half-grin. “You have medical training or something?”

“One of my sisters was studying to become a nurse before I left home. Some of all that garbage rubbed off on me.”

Vinny Riviero is a good person who got mixed up with some bad people - and that’s how he becomes Melissa Iannucci’s personal nurse.

(Later, he’ll wish that first time was the only time he’d ever have to mop blood off of her skin - but it won’t be.)

* * *

As weeks bleed into months, Doug Judy finds himself wondering if Fate has finally led him astray. He’s been a witness and accomplice to more hard crime in the last five months than he has in his entire life before that - and Amy’s not even positive that she’ll be able to get him an exemption when all is said and done.

Of course, he’d only brought it up once, on a bleak morning when she met him for coffee in a little place in SoHo and had trudged inside wearing a wide-brimmed hat and bug-eyed sunglasses that she refused to take off. At first, he’d thought it was due to a hangover. But then he’d seen her bruised eye when she’d turned her head to the left to look out the window.

His timing isn't always impeccable.

“The Feds don’t even know you’re helping me,” she’d said quietly as she stirred her coffee. She’d hardly taken more than a sip of it in the twenty minutes they’d been sitting there. “I mean, Agent Larson is...she’s pretty reasonable when it comes to the stuff we have to do to help the case. But I can’t guarantee anything.”

“What about Rosa and them? You think they’d be able to cut me a deal at the end of this?”

A whisper of a laugh hissed through her teeth. “Doug, _they’re_ not even supposed to be involved.”

“So...what are you saying?”

“I’m saying,” she said with a sigh, “if you want a guarantee...you’ll have to run.”

His eyebrows shot skyward. “Are you for real?”

“Yeah. It’s the only guaranteed thing right now, Judy. You’re good at escaping, and you’re good at disappearing. I’ll do my best to get you an exemption, but running is the only sure-fire plan of escape you’re gonna get out of this.”

“Well I’m not gonna just...ditch you,” he said after a moment.

He saw the faint outline of her eyes flickering up to him behind her frames. “I...don’t think you should run right now,” she said carefully. “But when the time is right...you should.”

“‘When the time is right’?” He repeated. “What the hell does that mean?”

“You’ll know, I think, when it’s time to bail. Jake always says you have a knack for that.”

He’d swallowed hard and tried to ignore the sinking feeling in his gut. But Fate has never led him astray before, and despite his growing doubt, there is a large part of him that faithfully believes that everything will work out.

Of course, it’s kind of hard to keep thinking that now, with Peralta trudging toward him in the park. His coat collar is turned up against his neck and his hands are buried deep in his pockets and his shoulders hunch against the chilly November air. Judy shifts, trying to ignore the faint prickle of doubt on the back of his neck.

“Why couldn’t I bring anyone else to this?” Peralta asks the moment he’s within earshot.

“‘Cause what I have to tell you is heavy. And I thought, y’know, you’d want to react alone.”

Peralta furrows his brow and drops into the seat across from him. Judy chose a secluded picnic table set several yards off the closest trail; several trees stand between them any passersby. “What are you talking about?” He asks carefully.

Judy sighs. Peralta’s legs are jiggling relentlessly beneath the table. “Before I tell you, I want you to know: she’s alright.”

Peralta freezes and pales, fists suddenly clenched so tight his knuckles are bone-white. “What happened?”

“I don’t know the whole story yet -”

“What happened to Amy?” He interrupts a little more forcefully.

Judy exhales slowly. “She got hurt, man.”

Peralta seems to struggle to swallow for a moment. “How bad?” He whispered, choked and distant.

“I dunno. All I saw was a black eye. She was wearing a bunch of clothes and a hat and sunglasses, but she turned her head and I saw the black eye.” He leans closer, trying to ignore the anguished look on Peralta’s face. “I think it might’ve been the boss dude she’s been fake-dating.” Peralta makes a noise, low and strangled in the back of his throat. He starts rocking back and forth slowly, so slowly Judy’s pretty sure he’s not even aware of the movement. “But listen, dude, she’s okay. I promise you, she’s okay. I just had coffee with her yesterday down in SoHo and she’s fine.”

He shakes his head erratically, like he’s trying to shake off an irritating fly. “Not _fine,_ ” he chokes, “ _not._ ”

“Okay...look, this is gonna seem...pretty insensitive, now that I’m thinkin’ about it,” Peralta’s gaze flickers up to Judy from the tabletop between them. “She said she wasn’t sure if she’d be able to get me exempt from all the shit I’ve had to do while I’ve been working for her. She said she’d try, but she couldn’t guarantee anything. And she said she didn’t think y’all would be able to do anything to help me on y’all’s end, either.”

Peralta blinks and narrows his eyes. “And?”

“She...told me that...I should run.” Peralta rears back a little, eyes suddenly wide with panic. Despite the sinking feeling in his gut, Judy presses on. “She said it was the only sure-fire way to avoid whatever consequences may be headin’ my way at the end of this. And the more I think about it, the more I realize she’s right. I’ve seen some things, man. I’ve done some things. And unless I can get a guarantee, I’m gonna have to bounce unless I wanna spend the next thirty years in prison. Which I don’t want to do, by the way.”

Peralta lifts a trembling finger slowly, pointing directly at Judy’s heart. “You _will not_ abandon her,” he says, voice low and cracking and dangerous. “You swore, you _swore -_ ”

“Hey, easy, man,” Judy says, holding his hands up cautiously. Peralta is positively shaking with a combination of rage and grief; Judy’s pretty sure he’s going to implode in the next thirty seconds if he doesn’t hear something good. “I’m not abandoning her. No way in hell.”

Peralta’s hand thumps against the table as he drops it.

“Look, I’d be lyin’ if I didn’t tell you that I _want_ to run. But I _always_ wanna run, man. This is nothin’ new for me.” He casts a glance over each of his shoulders and leans even further forward. “I really do care about what happens to your girl. You’re right, I swore I’d be there for her and for y’all until the end of this thing. I’m just, y’know...tryin’ to think about what’s gonna happen after, is all. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep y’all in contact with her, but I’d rather not spend the rest of my good years in prison for it, you know what I’m sayin’?”

Peralta nods slowly, and Judy _swears_ he can see his temple pulsing. “Yeah. I do.” He says hoarsely.

And that’s when it hits Doug Judy: Peralta could go to prison, too. He’s pretty sure interfering with a federal investigation is a crime. Peralta, Diaz, and all the other kids that work at that precinct, they’re all in the same boat as him.

Except their entire careers are on the line, too.

“But I’ll go, if that’s what it takes,” Judy hears himself say.

Peralta looks up at him through his lashes. “Yeah,” he whispers after a moment, “me too.”

* * *

Charles Boyle is a hopeful man.

When he’d first learned about Amy going undercover, his initial reaction was that of joy on her behalf. He knew how hard she’d worked for such a prestigious opportunity, and he was glad she was finally getting the chance to prove just how hard of a worker she truly is.

Of course, his perception of it all changed the moment he saw the hickey on Jake’s neck. He still remained hopeful, though; those slow-burn romances are often the most rewarding, after all.

(He’ll never admit this to Jake, but he’s also hopeful for a little PDA in the precinct when Amy comes back. Let him live - he’s been _praying_ for this for close to _ten years_ now.)

But as the investigation wears on, he begins to find it more and more difficult to remain hopeful. There are Fumero-related incidents reported on a near-weekly basis in the Nine-Nine alone; he’s not even really sure about the other precincts because the Vulture refuses to divulge the information to them. He knows that Jake is essentially living in Amy’s apartment now, because they ride the elevator up together every morning and Jake always smells faintly like Amy’s perfume. The dark circles beneath Jake’s eyes get darker and darker with each passing day, and Charles is starting to get genuinely worried that his friend will never be quite the same again.

(He still has hope that this will all work out for the best, though. He _always_ has hope.)

Jake came back on this cloudy Thursday morning from his meeting with Doug Judy ten minutes previously and he’s been working in a frenzy ever since, rushing and tripping to and fro across the bullpen, hardly even responding when Rosa quietly hisses his name. Doug must have had bad news; that’s the only explanation Charles can come up with for just how manic Jake’s energy is.

But, as disconcerting as Jake’s behavior is, it’s _nothing_ compared to the realization that the Vulture is calmly watching Jake through the office window.

Rosa trudges from her desk to Charles’ guest chair and leans back against it, turned toward Jake’s desk. She crosses her arms over her chest and taps her foot impatiently on the tiles beneath her. “Something bad happened,” she hisses to Charles.

“Someone has to tell him to calm down, the Vulture’s noticed he’s acting weird,” Charles whispers. He sees Rosa’s jaw clench.

“Alright, you get Peralta down to Babylon and let him freak out there. I’ll get Gina to distract the Vulture, and I’ll make sure Jake hasn’t left anything out on his desk.”

“Got it.”

“Wait for my signal.”

He watches her step around Jake, who’s paused in the middle of the bullpen floor with his nose buried in a case file, to hurry toward Gina’s desk. After a moment of quiet whispers, Gina stands up and hurries into the Vulture’s office; Rosa turns and nods to Charles.

“Jakey!” Charles says loudly. Jake jumps, peeking up at him over the top of the case file in bewilderment. “I need your help getting something out of my car.”

“I can’t -”

“No no, you  _ promised _ you’d help me. Remember?”

Jake’s shoulders fall. “I - yeah. Okay.”

He lets Charles pull him down the stairs by the wrist, all the way to Babylon, and it isn’t until they’re inside with the door safely shut that Charles notices Jake is still holding the case file as he paces. “Buddy -”

“He beat her. The cartel guy, he beat her up.”

There’s a lump in Charles’ throat. “I’m so sorry, Jake,” he manages.

“That’s what Judy said. They’re still trying to figure out where the base is - I mean, as soon as we find their source, this ends, right? As soon as we figure out where they’re making the drugs, where they’re producing, this is all over, and she’ll come home? So I was looking through the Iannucci case files again, y’know, thinking maybe -”

“Jake, you have to calm down.” Charles interrupts with a wince.

Jake blinks at him rapidly. “What?”

“It’s just that...you’ve been a little crazy since you came back from meeting with Judy, and the Vulture has noticed.”

Jake’s still blinking, but he’s furrowed his brow. “I don’t give a  _ rat’s ass _ about -”

“I know you don’t,” Charles interrupts again, “but if he catches you working this case, he’ll demote you to beat, and then you won’t be able to do _anything_ for Amy. It’s better for her in the long run if you just...just calm down. Take a minute to breathe.”

Jake inhales slowly through his nose, and when he exhales, he nods. “I know. You’re right. I’m being an idiot. I know.”

Charles takes a step forward and claps him on the shoulder. “We’re gonna get through this. And when we do, she’ll come home, and you guys will share the most beautiful relationship mankind has ever seen.”

Jake winces, but there’s a little spark of hope in his eyes. “Yeah,” he breathes.

“Did Judy say if she’s alright?” Charles asks gently after a moment of comfortable quiet.

Jake’s expression darkens. “He said he hadn’t gotten a good look at her yet. She was wearing a bunch of clothes and a hat and some sunglasses. All he saw was a black eye when she turned her head.”

A cold, unpleasant feeling drips down Charles’ spine. “She’s survived much worse,” he reminds Jake gently.

“Yeah, but...she’s never had to do it alone.”

And he’s right - because in every memory Charles has that involves something bad happening to Amy, Jake has always been right there beside her.

They stay down in Babylon for another few minutes before Jake seems more level-headed, and then Charles leads the way back up the stairs. And in the few minutes between floors, Charles pretty genuinely believes that things might finally be looking up.

Rosa and Gina have retreated behind Gina’s desk, and the Vulture is hovering over Jake’s desk when the elevator doors open. At the sound of the ding he whirls around to face Jake and Charles. There’s a look on his face - one of dangerous triumph - and suddenly Charles is very much regretting the clam chowder he ordered for lunch earlier.

“You thought payin’ all your loser pals to cover your ass would be enough to keep me from figuring out what you’ve been doing, Peralta?” He demands. He’s brandishing a fistful of crumpled papers littered with Jake’s haphazard scrawl, and as they step off the elevator, he reaches around and seizes another fistful from Jake’s desk. “Did you really think you were gonna outsmart _me_?”

“I told you,” Jake says calmly, “Santiago’s my partner, and -”

“Not anymore,” the Vulture interrupts, a sadistic grin spreading across his face. “That ship has sailed. You’re demoted, you hear me?”

All the air is immediately vacuumed out of the room. Suddenly the world is moving in slow motion; Charles absorbs the way Rosa turns her face away, toward the hallway with the bathrooms. Gina takes a step forward, mouth open, as though she is about to interject. Terry is frozen in the break room doorway. Even Hitchcock and Scully are looking back and forth between Jake and the Vulture, and Charles is pretty sure they’re actually engaged in what’s happening. In that moment, Charles recognizes two possibilities for what will happen next: either Jake is going to explode, destroying the precinct (and the Vulture) in the aftermath. Or he will shut down and accept his fate.

“Okay.” Charles hears Jake say. There’s an unfamiliar quality to Jake’s voice; a fractured detachment that he’s never heard before.

Charles Boyle is a hopeful man - but as he watches his best friend leave the bullpen for presumably the last time, he’s overcome with a deep, undeniable despair.

* * *

Gina shows up at Amy’s apartment around ten o’clock in the evening, grocery bag knocking against her knees as she navigates Amy’s narrow entryway. Jake looks up at her blearily beneath Amy’s blanket, which is pulled up over his head. She pauses and scans the room - eyes lingering on the box full of his things from his desk abandoned beneath the television before flickering to his discarded clothes lying in a heap on the far side of the couch - and when she looks at him, he can see the registration that he’s sitting on Amy’s couch wearing her blanket and his boxers and his own raw numbness flickering in her eyes before her face settles in an unreadable mask.

“I brought ice cream.” She mutters quietly, lifting the bag an inch.

The grocery bag ends up on the coffee table and she retreats to the kitchen, reappearing less than sixty seconds later with two spoons. She thrusts one into his hand and drops onto the couch beside him, kicking her shoes off and reaching for the bag. She produces two pint-sized cartons of cookie dough ice cream (their go-to heartache dessert ever since Klyde Warren dumped her back in the seventh grade) and hands one to him, eyes already glued to the television.

He’s been watching recording after recording of Amy’s favorite telenovela, muted with the subtitles turned on. He tucks the ice cream container in the center of his crossed legs, wrapped in excess blanket to keep it from brushing the exposed skin of his legs. The comfortable silences lasts all of five minutes.

“What’s that guy’s name?”

“Raphael,” Jake says. His voice is clogged from lack of use, so he stabs his spoon into his pliant ice cream and clears his throat behind his fist.

“He’s hot,” Gina says absently. “Who’s that?”

“That’s Lauren.”

“She’s hot, too. I can’t read the subtitles.”

“I can try to make them bigger -”

“Raphael,” Gina says, her voice suddenly three octaves higher than usual, “I must hold on to your bulging biceps because my hair is so long and beautiful I’m afraid I’ll fall over backwards from the weight of all these extensions!”

Jake glances between Gina and the television, but Gina’s sole focus is on the couple interacting on the screen.

“Lauren,” her voice suddenly gets deeper, “your face is so symmetrical it freaks me out. I must...I must hold it,” on the screen, Raphael takes Lauren’s face in his hands, but Jake’s smiling so broadly he can’t read the subtitles very clearly. “Now I’m gonna stick my tongue down your throat and call it chemistry.”

Raphael lunges at Lauren’s face and Jake dissolves into laughter. He can hear Gina chuckling too, wiggling around on Amy’s couch until her knee brushes against his thigh, and he’s laughing so hard tears are streaming down his face. The blanket slips from around his head and his ice cream falls to the floor and he can’t stop crying now, he doesn’t know when he even started, he isn’t even sure that he’d ever stopped crying since waking up alone in his bed all those months ago.

Gina immediately pulls him toward her by a fold in his blanket, and before he knows it, his head is resting on her chest and she’s smoothing his hair down at his temple and rubbing his upper arm through the blanket soothingly. Suddenly he’s seven years old again, freshly abandoned with absolutely no clue how to handle the literal storm of emotions swirling through him; and once again, Gina is here to take care of him.

“Shhh, shhh, it’s okay,” she whispers. He can feel her lips flutter against his forehead. “It’s gonna be okay, girl. It’s all gonna be okay. We’re gonna figure this out.”

There’s a thick quality to her voice that suggests fought-back tears, and it suddenly hits Jake - she’s been struggling, too. She’s been making a show around the precinct to prove just how _little_ all of this has affected her, but now that her heartbeat is thudding against his ear and her trembling fingers are running through his hair, he just _knows._

He wonders if Gina also feels like she’s sitting at the bottom of the ocean right now.

He’s numb. From the ice cream, from the shock, from the grief. But it’s nothing new, really. He’s been numb for six months now.

They stay in that position for a very long time, neither one of them speaking again. It feels wrong to speak here. This is a sacred, delicate place. And words will destroy it.

They go through every single recording on Amy’s DVR, and then it’s three in the morning and he’s delirious, exhausted out of his right mind, and he might still be crying a little bit (he is, a lot, and he can’t stop) as he rolls off the couch and shuffles blindly into Amy’s bedroom. 

If the last good thing in his life is going to be ripped away from him in a day, he’s going to recover that night in a bed, damn it.

“Jake,” her voice breaks over his name and he stops, fingers curling tighter in the folds of the blanket. He feels a hand, Gina’s hand, on his shoulder - strong and firm and steady, everything that he isn’t. “I’m sorry.” She breathes.

He bites down on his tongue to keep the ugly sob trying to wrench free of his throat from escaping and nods stiffly, and he feels her pushing him forward with the hand on his shoulder into the comfortable shadows of Amy’s bedroom.

His vision comes in flashes: her perfectly made bed, throw pillows flying through the air, comforter ripped back, sheets pulled up, face buried in a pillow soaked in the scent of Amy’s shampoo, darkness.

When he wakes in the morning, Gina’s arm is draped loosely over the top of his, hand hanging limply, fingertips just barely brushing the mattress an inch in front of his chest. He turns his head back toward her carefully, and her head is on the pillow behind him, bowed, but not so severely that he can’t see her facial expression.

Her eyebrows are drawn together in determination, mouth pulled down in a frown. He’d seen her sleeping before - he lost count of just how many sleepovers the two of them have had since childhood - and he’s never seen such an intense look on her unconscious face before. He has a brief vision of a knight in a children’s fairy tale book, frowning in concentration as they attempted to slay the dragon. And in the dark fog shrouding his mind, he feels a brief, faint light.

He was wrong before, his life definitely _could_ have gotten worse (and it has), but at least he still has a few people in his corner.


	7. you were stuck inside i couldn't get you out (b)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings: physical abuse, drug abuse

A month has passed since the first time Archie beat her, and he’s done it twice more in fits of drunken rage since then. She’s gone to Vinny each time, bound and determined to avoid the hospital and a face-to-face meeting with Larson. She hasn’t actually seen Larson in about three months, and part of her worries that if Larson sees the two AM sewing kit stitch job on that slice across her shoulder blades from the jagged pipe Archie hit her with, she might think Amy has lost control of the investigation.

She _hasn’t_. George has been talking about planning a trip to their homebase, which she has gathered is somewhere in France. _Find the exact location,_ Larson’s last email said, _and get it to us. We’re already in contact with the French police. Get us the location, and the hardest part of this investigation will be done._

_S_ o she’s hanging on, even though it sometimes feels as if she’s clinging by her fingertips to a careening freight train headed over the edge of a cliff, __Thelma and Louise__ style.

There comes a week early in December in which Amy is laying low, recovering from her latest injuries doled out by Archie (which includes that slice on her back and a rib that twinges each time she inhales too deeply). It’s an unassuming week, a calm one, even. She hasn’t seen or spoken to Doug since mid-November; he’d left for a meeting with Jake in the park and never came back, but she isn’t concerned for his safety just yet. He’s become something of a runner for the bosses, which has actually proven strategic for Amy: many of them ask for her blessings first, and she’ll take whatever authority she can get. His extended absences have never bothered her before.

Until now. Because it’s been two weeks since she’s had any communication with her squad, and she’s starting to feel the desperation seeping into her bones. And it’s only magnified with each passing day she spends alone in her apartment.

She’d seen Vinny jog across the street an hour earlier, presumably to go talk to Jessica. He’s been spending a lot more time over there recently, which sort of warms Amy’s heart when it doesn’t remind her of Jake. There’s a part of her that idly wonders if she’ll ever find out what will happen to Vinny after the investigation. He’s a really good kid; she thinks he might have just gotten involved with the wrong crowd at a young age.

It took about four months to fully realize it, but Amy’s pretty sure that Vinny is who Jake would have been had Jake ended up a criminal instead of a detective. He’s got the same sweet disposition, that same inherent desire to help people, that same _je ne sais quoi_ that always makes people (no matter who they are or where they’re from) trust him.

(There are moments when she looks at him that she’s just overwhelmed by all the _Jake_ she sees in him. Jake, who’d looked at her the with the same facial expression Vinny gets when he talks about Jessica. Jake, who always made sure she remembered to eat when she was in frantic case-solving mode, just like Vinny does when he knows Jessica is working a double shift across the street.)

It’s an unassuming week. Which is why she is so caught off-guard when it all takes off.

It starts with a bang, a gunshot, somewhere on the street outside her window. She’s still scrambling off her couch (carefully, carefully, pulling as much of her weight up with her arms as she can to avoid jostling her ribs and her still-healing shoulders) when the screams begin, and by the time she makes it to her window, she can see people scattering, all running away from the bodega. As she watches, she sees Vinny emerge, pulling Jessica along behind him by the hand. He darts into an alley to the right of the front door.

She snatches her cell phone off the dining room table as she rushes out her front door, dialing 911 before her front door swings shut behind her. The phone rings as she jogs, and she can already hear a few people shouting about gunshots through the doors that pass by her in a blur.

“Nine-one-one, what is your -”

“Gunshots, I just heard gunshots outside my apartment,” Amy heaves. Her rib throbs and she ignores it, jamming the down elevator button repeatedly with her index finger.

“What is your location?”

“McKinney Avenue, outside the Garden Estate Apartment Complex. I only heard one shot but people are running away from the bodega across the street.”

“Alright ma’am, I’ve sent a squad car your way. They should be there in the next five minutes. Please stay indoors until the area has been cleared.”

“Like hell,” Amy grumbles as she mashes down on the end button.

The elevator deposits her on the ground floor and just as she gets to the glass front doors, she sees an old Cadillac squeal away from the curb outside the bodega. She slows to a trot as it peels down the road and pushes the front door open just in time to see it round the corner and disappear from sight.

She just stands there for a few minutes afterwards, cell phone clutched in her right hand. The street slowly begins coming to life around her, people cautiously appearing around alleyway corners and sticking their heads out from first- and second-story windows. Low voices pick back up again, recreating the usual chatter of the street, but there’s an edge of uneasiness to it all now. Amy swallows.

She feels a light tug on her pants, just above her knee, and when she turns at the waist she’s met with a pair of wide eyes. “I’m lost,” a small voice says.

Amy supposes old habits really must die hard, for she drops her her knees beside the little girl, immediately slipping into first-responder mode. “What’s your name?” She asks calmly.

“Mia.” The girl says. She’s got shiny black hair pulled into pigtails above her ears and her shirt is pink with a cartoon rainbow and a cartoon unicorn on it.

“Well my name is Melissa, and I really like your shirt.” Mia smiles briefly and glances down at her shirt. “Mia, do you remember where you last saw your mommy or daddy?”

“In the store,” she points at the bodega across the street, and when she withdraws her hand her index finger lands between her lips. “But there was a scary man and he made us leave and when we went outside I got lost.”

“Okay, well, do you remember which way they went?”

She points vaguely to the right. Sirens have faded in, growing louder and more piercing with each passing second and as Amy gazes down the street she sees three squad cars careen into view. “I’ll tell you what,” she says into Mia’s ear, “why don’t we walk that way and I’ll see if I can help you find them. Is that okay?”

Mia nods, index finger still in her mouth, and when Amy reaches for her left hand she gives it to her with no hesitation. Amy takes slow, small steps, and together they teeter down the sidewalk in the direction Mia originally pointed.

“Mel?” A familiar voice calls. She glances up to see Vinny jogging across the street from the mouth of the alleyway, where Jessica stands, looking completely lost and uncertain. “Whose kid is that?”

“I don’t know,” Amy says, glancing down at Mia. “She’s lost. You haven’t seen any parents looking for their kid, have you?”

“No,” Vinny shakes his head slowly, eyes glued to Mia. From her peripheral, Amy sees several cops in uniform jumping out of their squad cars and rushing to lock down the scene. “I’ll go look on the other end of the street, though, if you want me to?”

“Yeah, I think that would help.”

Vinny flashes Mia a toothy grin. “We’re gonna help you find your mama and papa, okay?”

“Okay,” Mia says shyly, her grip on Amy’s fingers tightening infinitesimally.

Vinny takes off at a jog in the opposite direction as Amy and Mia keep walking to the right. There’s a small crowd gathered around the cops now, more than likely giving their statements. Amy gravitates toward them, pulling Mia along as she goes.

She’s about ten feet away from the closest beat cop, whose back is turned toward them, when she sees a woman with Mia’s hair elbow her way to the front of the crowd. There's a desperate gleam in her eye and an all-too-familiar edge of panic in her voice. “Please, officer, my daughter, she - she’s -”

“Mommy!” Mia suddenly rips her hand from Amy’s grasp and sprints toward the woman. The woman shoves past the beat cop, who’d turned toward the source of the noise, and drops to her knees to sweep Mia up in a hug. Amy hears the mother babbling, sees her hands running over Mia’s back and arms, but her whole world has suddenly gone still and silent, because she _recognizes_ the beat cop.

Jake Peralta is seven feet away from her, looking like he’s just discovered Atlantis. There aren’t really words for the way he’s looking at her - awe, that’s the one that comes the closest, but it doesn’t quite encapsulate the breathlessness, the worshipful longing, the pure _adoration_ in his gaze. Her heart is hammering in her throat and she’s rooted to the spot because _Jake Peralta is standing seven feet away from her._

He snaps back to reality faster than she does, mostly because of the impatient witness tapping him on the shoulder. “Ah - um, ex-excuse me, I’m so sorry,” he says to the witness, and his voice is hoarse and choked and hidden beneath a layer of emotions that just don’t have names. “If you could - if you could just direct your statements over to Officer Daniels right over there, I have to...go,”

He points them all over to Officer Daniels and once they’re all walking away he turns back toward her. His expression is a bit more guarded this time, a bit more wary of their surroundings, and Amy suddenly realizes that her mouth is hanging open. She snaps it shut as he slowly closes the gap between them.

He stops two feet short, though, and he’s never felt further away.

“Ma’am,” he says quietly, and she hurts, she _hurts_ , because no matter how hard he tries to pretend like they don’t know each other (be it in jest at the bar or undercover on a stakeout or here, now, in the middle of the most dangerous investigation she has ever been involved in) there is _always_ a layer of familiarity and comfort. And it’s been so long, and she misses him so much, and he’s _within arm’s length_ of her, and she can’t touch him.

She opens her mouth to speak, but all that escapes her is a strangled hiccup noise. Concern flashes across his face for a second, but it vanishes, leaving behind a fairly convincing mask of clinical detachment.

“Are you alright, ma’am?” He asks gently. He takes another step forward and she catches a whiff of his deodorant and tears spring up in her eyes automatically. She shakes her head no just as the first tear spills down her face, and this time his look of concern stays present.

He leads her toward the side of the building, hand pressing briefly against her lower back, and she’s drowning in his scent and her thoughts are spinning because Jake is _here_ and he’s _with her_ and her _damn rib_ won’t stop aching and her throat already hurts from all the emotion just barely bottled up inside her mind.

The alley is somehow damp despite the sunny weather, amplifying the chilliness of the air, but the further into the alley they get the firmer his touch becomes and the firmer his touch becomes the more heat rises up from her core. Fifty yards back it makes a sharp left turn around the back of the building and he steers her into the turn.

And the moment they’re hidden from immediate view, he sweeps her right off her feet into a suffocating bear hug. The pain in her rib is _unbelievable_ but she holds her shout of discomfort in her chest, squeezing her eyes shut and wrapping her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist and enjoying the moment as much as she can before she has to ruin it. Jake has one arm around her waist, holding her to him, and his other hand runs down from the back of her head all the way to where his arm rests and then back up again. It’s the fifth time he runs over the still-tender stitches on her back that she finally cries out, unable to keep it choked down any longer.

Her feet hit the ground immediately as he rears back, both horror and tears in his eyes. His face is pale and pinched and his cheeks are flushed red and he’s _real_ and right in front of her eyes. She reaches for him, and he comes back to her immediately.

“Amy, Amy,” he whispers, cupping her face and running his thumbs over her cheeks. He lingers beneath her right eye, where the bruise from her black eye is still faintly visible, before running his hands through her hair to pull it away from her face. He’s still whispering her name, like it’s all he’s capable of saying, and she realizes she’s crying when she tries to laugh breathlessly and it comes out like a sob instead.

“I’m, I’m okay,” she murmurs, and he finally pauses to inhale. It’s shaky and choked with emotion and she has to close her eyes for a second because the look on his face is actually making her knees weak.

“I hurt you?” He asks, brows draw together in a severe upside-down V shape on his forehead.

“No, no,” she reaches up to smooth the creases with her fingertips and he closes his eyes briefly and leans into her touch. “I’m okay, honest.”

“He...hurt you?”

Amy hesitates, and Jake looks at her like his soul is on fire. “I'm okay,” she repeats in a whisper.

He hums, low and broken in his chest, and his hands begin roving. Nothing like that night before she left; this time, his hands graze along her arms, on her waist (he pauses when she winces over her rib), down her hips, and carefully up her back. His fingers end up tangled in her hair and she lets him angle her head up so that their foreheads rest together, and she closes her eyes to revel in the closeness.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she mumbles quietly. “It’s too dangerous.” She feels him pull away and when she opens her eyes he’s looking at her like she’s just started speaking French. “I know it’s been awhile since Judy’s been around but...don’t do this again, okay? Just wait for him to reach out to you guys with an update, don’t put yourself in danger by coming here in disguise.”

“Amy...this isn’t a disguise.” Jake says slowly. She furrows her brow. “The Vulture caught me working on the case. I...got demoted. I’m beat now.”

Her breath catches in her throat and solidifies there, blocking off her airway. Her vision suddenly gets very dark around the edges, blurry in the middle, and all sense of gravity has disappeared. She feels herself stumbling, hears Jake’s muffled voice, but none of it is reaching her because Jake got demoted _and it's her fault._

A pair of strong, steady hands grip either of her upper arms, holding her upright, not allowing her to cover her face. Jake’s voice is firm in her ears, and she recognizes the shape of his face just inches from her own. She fights through the haze to get back to him. It takes a few minutes, but eventually the buzz in her head begins to die down. “That’s right, keep lookin’ at me, Ames, you’re doing great,” she hears him murmur. “I’m right here, you’re okay. It’s all okay, Amy, everything’s okay. You’re safe. You’re safe.”

The solid lump in her throat clears and she gasps. “ _It’s my fault it’s my fault_ ,” she says in a strangled whisper.

“No.” He says sharply, fingers tightening around her upper arms briefly. “It’s _my_ fault. Judy told me you got hurt and I came back to the bullpen acting like an idiot, and the Vulture noticed. Charles tried to warn me but it was too late. None of this is your fault, Ames, so please don’t let yourself think that I blame you for _any_ of this.”

“But being a detective is all you’ve ever wanted -”

“Being a detective _was_ all I ever wanted,” he interrupts earnestly. “It’s not anymore.”

“I can’t...I can’t let you sacrifice your dream job for this stupid case, okay, I just can’t -”

“Amy, look at me.” He takes her face in his hands and forces her to meet his gaze, which is more steadfast than she's ever seen it be. “I don’t care about any of that. I don’t care about the Vulture being captain, I don’t care about Judy being gone, I don’t care about being demoted. I just care about _you,_ okay? Nothing else matters to me. As long as you’re okay, I’m okay.”

He pauses, his heavy breath coalescing into a fog between them. He looks as though he has more to say, but Amy’s pretty positive that if she doesn’t kiss him _right now_ she’s going to die.

So she does. She knocks his hands out of the way and pounces, grabbing his face and kissing him with such force that he stumbles back into the wall behind him. His hands land on her waist automatically to steady her and he responds to her enthusiasm with tenderness; she can feel his forehead creased against hers and when she briefly opens her eyes his brows are drawn together in passion.

She really only meant for it to be one kiss, but the moment their lips touch she’s suddenly aware of the fact that she is _starving_ and he’s the only meal left on the planet. She starts yanking his uniform shirt up from where it’s tucked into his pants, desperate to feel his skin again, and once her hands are beneath his undershirt and roving the warmth of his belly and lower back, he spins them around so that she’s the one up against the wall. He keeps an arm wrapped securely around her shoulders, just over the cut, so that it isn’t pressed against the grimy bricks through her jacket. With his other he quickly fumbles with the button of her pants and helps her coil her legs over his hips by hiking her knee up and supporting her weight beneath her thigh.

It’s over way too quickly, far sloppier and more desperate than her last night before the investigation, but it's just as passionate. Once they’ve stopped their repetitive movements, once her breath has evened out and she's returned to earth, she buries her face in the crook of his neck and clings to him, not ready to let go yet.

She feels his nose skim along her shoulder over her jacket and he presses his lips against her neck before going still, mirroring her pose, arms tightening around her just as her legs tighten around his waist.

“I miss you,” she says softly, gently running her nails through the hair on the nape of his neck.

One of his hands skates up her back and tangles in her hair, fingers curling around the locks into a fist and tugging gently. “Miss you too,” he whispers. “So much.”

They stay in that position, stroking each other’s hair and occasionally trailing kisses along each other’s necks and jaws, until eventually Jake pulls away. He presses his forehead to hers again and they both close their eyes, and when he kisses her again she does her best to pour her heart and soul into him. Amy recognizes the moment for what it is: one last moment of solitude.

Once she’s on her feet and standing a distance away from him, she turns back to furtively watch him tuck his shirt back into his pants and rehook his belt. “I think you need to get some distance from this case,” she says quietly as she buttons her pants.

His head snaps up toward her, defiance flashing in his eyes. “What? Why?”

“You could get  _ fired  _ over this, Jake.”

“I already told you, I don’t care -”

“Well _I_ do!” She interrupts. “You’re saying that now, which is fine, but...c’mon! Twenty years from now when this case is over, you’ll still be a beat cop and you’ll always regret throwing your career away because of this stupid case!”

“D’you  _ really think _ I’m doing all of this for the case?” He asks, his voice small and trembling.

She can’t handle thinking otherwise.

“You _love_ solving cases, Jake,” she says tiredly. “When a major case hits the precinct, it’s like...end-all be-all for you. And with every case before this one, things have always worked out for you in the end. But I don’t think this case is gonna be the same way. You have to take a step back and realize that you’re basically throwing your future away because of all this.” He’s staring at her, looking as though she’s just slapped him, and her stomach sinks. “Why else would you be doing this?” She whispers. He opens his mouth to answer and his radio suddenly blares to life on his shoulder. His hand rises and his fingers brush against it absently. “I have to go,” she mumbles.

“Wait, Amy -”

“I’ve been in here for too long and they’re gonna wonder where I am, I have to -”

He’s moving toward her, hand outstretched, but she gets around the corner before he can reach her. She hurries down the alley, ignoring the tears rolling down her face, and rushes across the street without bothering to glance for oncoming traffic (not that it matters, the street is blocked off as a crime scene).

Vinny’s sitting on her couch when she gets inside. He looks up expectantly when he hears her come in, but his whole facial expression softens in concern when he registers that she’s crying. “Mel?”

“I, uh, found the girl’s mom,” Amy says thickly. She hovers behind the dining room chair, too anxious to come any further inside. Vinny rises from the couch and swings his hands at his sides absently, looking around the room like he’s searching for something to give her. “Sorry I didn’t find you afterwards.”

“S’okay, I figured you were...busy,” Her heart skips a beat at the inflection of his voice, but when she glances up at him, he’s looking out her window at the street. “Guess they got all they needed,” he says. “One of ‘em just got in his squad car and left.”

She hums and turns her head away to hide the fresh batch of tears dripping down her face.

* * *

George Fumero is an endlessly patient, generous, merciful man. He works hard for his empire and takes care of those who do the same. He sees no problem in donating a portion of his own personal fortune so that his colleagues’ children can go to good universities. His charitable benevolence has touched the lives of so many in his childhood community, often through anonymous donations. He doesn’t need the credit.

George is an endlessly patient man - for those in his good graces.

He’s not quite as charitable toward those who are not.

It was an unfortunate occurrence. Some might even call it a tragedy. George prefers to think of it as business.

In his line of work, a number of unsavory acts are involved - perhaps the most unsavory is that of taking advantage of those poor people who are predisposed toward addiction. He’s never actually had any of the stuff his empire is responsible for producing, but he’s seen the bodies of those who have - ravaged beyond recognition. The remnants of his conscience might feel guilty for bleeding them dry of every possible cent. 

(It’s only a tiny little shred of conscience.)

Unfortunately, due to said unsavory acts, it is of the utmost importance than his crew remain loyal to a fault. He can’t have an addict working for him: he would make no profit. His crew is clean and loyal and addicted only to the sale and the expansion of his empire.

His screening process is generally quite rigid - but every now and then a rat slips through.

This particular rat’s name is Frankie Mendoza.

George has been getting a really bad feeling about that guy lately, anyways. Now, according to his normal procedure for terminating rats, it’s up to the rat’s direct supervisor to carry out the termination. He’s never had a supervisor object to the process before.

Until now.

“Melissa,” George says soothingly. She’s standing a few feet in front of him, back turned toward him, facing the rat in question (who’s cowering on the floor before her). “Frankie here knew the risks in getting involved with this cartel. Didn’t you, Frankie?”

“I swear, I didn’t mean -”

“Shut the fuck up.” George snaps. Frankie falls silent, tucking his head back down beneath his arms, practically fetal on the ground. Melissa still hasn’t moved, but George can clearly see the gun she’s got pointed at Frankie trembling violently. It’d be a miracle if she actually managed to hit him, even at just a two foot distance. “Melissa, sweetheart, I know the first time is intimidating. But really think about what he _did_ -”

There are a few noises of impatience somewhere behind him, and George shoots a venomous glare over his shoulder. Archie’s leaned up against the shelving units with Mark and Joe, arms crossed over his chest, rolling his eyes up toward the ceiling. George’s gaze flicks from them to the rest of Melissa’s team, standing to her left, looking absolutely terrified. Both Doug and Vinny look from her to Frankie to her over and over again, as if they can’t quite process what they’re seeing. That small shred of conscience aches for them all for just a moment.

“Sweetheart,” George starts again, “this is just how these things go. Your boy tried to squeal on you, and he got caught. He’s a threat to our entire organization. He can’t walk free.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Frankie whines. Melissa flexes her grip around her gun and shakes her head a little, like she’s trying to scare off a fly.

“There are no second chances here, boy,” George says, sidling up to stand just to Melissa’s right. She flinches a little, but her eyes never leave Frankie’s face. “That much was made abundantly clear to you when we hired you.”

“C’mon,” Archie half-yells. He's pacing now, moving to stand behind Frankie, to face Melissa. “Pull the damn trigger.”

Melissa clenches her jaw and swallows thickly. There’s a moment in which George swears he hears a drumroll...and then Melissa slowly lowers her gun.

“I can’t,” she whispers, eyes suddenly brimming with tears.

George has only just gotten his hand on her shoulder to both console and encourage when suddenly a gun explodes and his ears ring. He feels something warm and wet on the legs of his pants, and when he looks down, his jeans are stained with dark blood.

Frankie slumps over, motionless, and Archie lowers his gun behind him.

“Y’all take too damn long.” He growls in the ringing silence that follows.

Melissa’s clearly in shock. Her clothes are dotted with blood and her mouth hangs open, like she can’t quite believe what she just saw, what she was almost a part of. “You’ll get his next one,” George assures her with a gentle pat on the arm. Melissa’s gaze flickers up to him, but before he can so much as smile consolingly she’s back to staring at Frankie’s body.

He steers her away, back toward the side entrance, with an arm around her shoulders. “Listen, I don’t know if you remember this, but I told you a little about my European connection, Freddie Maliardi. You remember?”

She blinks a few times, still obviously shaken, but she nods. “I - yeah, I remember.”

“He’s got a potential new client over in France and he’s requested some representatives from the homebase to come out and help him make the sale. And I thought, who better to send than my arms dealer?”

“To...to France?”

“Yes. You interested?”

“Uh...yeah. Yes. I would...uh-huh.”

He grins and squeezes her shoulders. “Great. Your flight leaves tomorrow and I’m sending Archie with you. It’ll be like a romantic little vacation for the two of you.”

Her smile is weak and utterly unconvincing, and once again, that little slice of conscience he has twinges with regret.

But only for a moment.


	8. and the two of us went up in smoke (a)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LET'S TRY THIS AGAIN
> 
> AO3 deleted two huge chunks in the uploading process sO i took them down and now i'm readding them
> 
> Hopefully things will run more smoothly this time
> 
> THIS IS WHAT I GET FOR TRYING TO USE EMOJIS

There’s a body falling from the roof of a warehouse down by the docks.

* * *

There comes a time in every person’s life wherein they question everything they previously knew to be unshakeable truths about themselves. A midlife crisis of sorts, though not contained to the middle of one’s time on Earth; a complete and total tilt on a personal planetary axis.

It’s messy, and terrifying, and right now Vinny is experiencing it full-swing at the tender young age of twenty-five.

He’s in Melissa’s apartment, sitting on her couch, watching in numb horror as she paces her living room. She’s talking to Doug but their conversation is garbled in his ears - Melissa’s pants are stained with Frankie’s blood.

He closes his eyes and sees it again, in full technicolor: the blinding flash, the explosion of red, the river of blood flowing slowly and steadily away from the motionless body that had housed his friend and confidant just moments before. He can still hear Doug’s ragged gasp, Melissa’s shuddering exhale, George’s soothing voice. It’s all so real and vivid and happening -

His eyes snap open. “Holy shit,” He whispers.

Melissa whirls around at that, seemingly just remembering that he’s in the room. “Vinny, Vin, are you okay?” She hurries to him, crouches down beside the couch, forces him to meet her eyeline.

He tries to scoff, but it comes out too high-pitched and strangled, and they both wince. “They killed him,” he says, gruffly and hoarsely, and he just doesn’t know who he is anymore because that voice definitely isn’t his. That voice, this apartment, this life, this future - none if it is his, none of it is what he wants. There’s something more urgent than fear buzzing in the air around them. For the first time in seven years, he desperately misses his ma. “They just, they  _ shot  _ him, Mel. They were gonna make  _ you _ \- I mean, what kind of - I don’t - this is wrong, this is  _ bad _ , we gotta  _ do  _ something -”

“Vinny, calm down -”

“We gotta call the cops.”

There’s a beat of silence that follows his statement, one in which Melissa’s eyes go as wide as saucers and Doug Judy tenses every muscle in his body. It’s strange, and surreal, but he reaches for his phone and pulls it out of his pocket anyways.

“Wait, n-no, no, you can’t - don’t -” Melissa lurches forward, her fingers clamping down around the phone in a vice-like grip. She yanks hard enough to almost pull it from his grasp; he springs to his feet and they begin to wrestle over the phone. Melissa knocks him backwards into her side table, knocking the lamp down to the floor with a carpet-muffled crash, and just when he thinks he’s about to overtake her strength, a pair of long, strong arms clamp down over his in a backwards bear hug.

“Easy, now, don’t be a dummy,” he hears Doug say, his voice low.

Melissa straightens, panting, Vinny’s phone now in her grasp.

Vinny lurches toward her, but Doug’s grip is strong. “Gimme the phone - goddammit, let me  _ go _ !”

“Not if you’re gonna call the cops,” Melissa says, stuffing his phone in her back pocket and backing away from where Vinny’s flailing.

“We have to  _ tell someone _ what just  _ happened  _ -”

“Were you not paying attention? They  _ bugged _ Frankie’s phone, they  _ heard the whole phone call _ . If we call the cops, we’re  _ dead! _ ”

He’s still struggling against Doug’s stranglehold, but he manages to bark out a laugh. “Alright, so why don’t we call that guy you were boning in the alley last week?”

Melissa and Doug both freeze, and every ounce of color drains from her face immediately. “What?” She whispers, and the word slips through stiff, motionless lips.

“Last week, when we were looking for that kid’s ma - you were boning some  _ dude _ in the alley.”  _ Where I had my first kiss with Jessica _ , his mind automatically finishes.

“Oh, shit,” Doug murmurs, his arms now completely taut around Vinny’s torso.

“You, you...you  _ saw _ that?” Melissa says, her voice a little louder now, though at least two octaves higher than usual.

Vinny scoffs. “Y’all weren’t exactly  _ hiding. _ ”

“Oh,  _ shit, _ ” Doug mumbles.

“Oh, God,” Melissa breathes, dropping her head and covering her face with one hand for a moment. She groans into her palm, and then snaps her head back up. There’s a renewed determination in her eyes. “Vinny, listen to me, you gotta trust me on th-”

“How can I trust you if you’re goin’ around screwin’ cops in your spare time?” Vinny interrupts loudly. He’s straining against Doug’s arms, the veins in his neck bulging almost painfully, while Doug keeps up a quiet, steady stream of profanity over his head. “He was wearing a  _ uniform, _ Mel!”

“ _ Ho _ -ly shit, you and  _ Peralta _ ?” Doug’s voice booms.

Melissa shoots Doug a look Vinny can’t quite decipher. Vinny furrows his brow and strains his head up, trying to get a look at Doug’s expression. It’s like suddenly becoming aware of some previously-invisible presence in the room; it’s there, and he can feel it, but he has absolutely no idea what it is. “Shut  _ up, _ Doug,” Melissa hisses.

“What’re you guys talking about?” Vinny demands.

“N-nothing, nothing.” Melissa says quickly, and Doug’s arms tighten around his torso. She looks like an animal caught in a trap. “I can explain  _ all  _ of this -”

“If they find out you’re  _ doin’ it _ with cops, don’t you think they’ll do something real bad to you like they just did to Frankie, Mel? Like, Frankie just called the cops, but you - you let a cop stick his -”

“Oh, God,  _ please  _ don’t finish that sentence -”

“You could be sleepin’ with  _ literally anyone else _ on the  _ whole entire planet _ , why’d you have to go pick a  _ cop _ ?”

“It’s not - it’s not that simple -”

“Look, I get it, Mel,” Vinny says, “Archie’s an asshole and he deserves to rot in jail for the rest of his life, but you can’t just go fu-”

“I’m a detective with the NYPD and I’m undercover on an assignment from the FBI.” She says it all in one breath, and then when the words are out she covers her mouth with her hands.

He’s not sure what he was expecting, but  _ that _ ...well, that settles it.

He’s having a nightmare.

“Okay, yeah, and I’m head of the Secret Service,” Vinny finally manages to wriggle free of Doug’s arms, and he starts across the space between them at a haughty pace. “Gimme the ph-”

“I’m telling you the truth.” Melissa says. Her voice is calm and even, and the hand she holds toward him is steady. He pauses mid-stride. The apartment, while freezing before, is suddenly way too hot and stuffy. “I work in the ninety-ninth precinct in Brooklyn, and seven months ago I was chosen to go undercover in the Fumero drug cartel.”

“Shut up.” Vinny says, even as uncertainty begins trickling down his spine.

“I’m serious. That’s why I’ve been letting Archie get away with all the bullshit he’s been getting away with. My job is to infiltrate and to find the main base in Europe. Doug’s been helping me -” 

Vinny whips around, and Doug’s ducking his head sheepishly. “Hey, man,” he mumbles, “you don’t turn your back on a friend.”

Melissa’s smiling wistfully when Vinny turns back to her. “- but I’ve been...I’ve been on my own. We can’t call the cops, Vinny, because I  _ am _ the cop.”

“So you’re...you’re tellin’ me that...they wouldn’t send anyone even if we  _ did _ call?”

“It’s complicated...it’s all a matter of jurisdiction at this point. But, yeah, I think if you mention the Fumero name, it...they won’t send anyone. Because if it interferes with the case in any way, the commanding officer could face severe penalties.”

She starts rambling about proper jurisdiction codes or something like that for a little while longer, but her words begin to fade into a buzz in Vinny’s ears. He stumbles backwards until the backs of his knees hit the edge of the couch, and then he drops heavily into the cushions and scrubs his fingers over his buzzed hair. The air is so muggy it feels like it’s solidifying in his throat; he can’t breathe. “You’re a  _ cop _ ?” He finally chokes out in a whisper.

“Yes.” Melissa nods and twists her fingers together. “But nothing’s gonna happen. I’ve got the full power of the FBI behind me, Vin, nothing’s gonna happen to you or to Doug.”

“What about you?” Confusion flits across her face, and Vinny has to resist the urge to shout. “I mean,  _ God _ , Mel, you’ve been getting the ever-living  _ shit _ beaten outta you by Archie, and they haven’t done shit to help you! What the hell are they doing for  _ you _ ?”

“I’m - look, it’s complicated. It’s a whole...don’t worry about it. I’ll be fine. This will all work out in the end, as long as I’m not an idiot.” She nods again, like she’s reassuring herself, and Vinny thinks it’s the least convincing he’s ever heard her be. “And you  _ have  _ to trust me, Vin. I can help you, I can get you out of this lifestyle, but you  _ have  _ to trust me.”

He stares at her for a long moment, just long enough that his eyes begin to blur the shape of her face into splotches of color, before he closes them and sighs. “Yeah. Okay. I trust you.” She’s grinning widely when his eyes snap open again. “Is your name really Melissa?”

Her grin falls away immediately. “Um…”

“Y’know what, I don’t wanna know.”

She sets her jaw and nods grimly. “You can’t tell anyone -”

“Oh, Jesus Christ, I’m not gonna tell anyone.”

“Right. Thank you.” She looks down at her feet and inhales deeply before lifting her head again. “I need to go call Larson,” she mutters, glancing at Doug, who nods in acknowledgement. “I don’t think I can fit all of this in an email.”

They watch her disappear into her bedroom and when the door clicks shut behind her, Doug meanders over to the couch and slumps down on the opposite end from where Vinny is sitting. They sit in silence, listening to Melissa’s muffled voice through the wall, before Vinny clears his throat. “So, who was the guy in the alley?”

From the corner of his eye, he can see Doug shaking his head and shifting uncomfortably. “C’mon, man, it ain’t really my place to -”

“Who was the guy?”

Doug meets his gaze and Vinny does his best to hold it, but there’s a burning sensation in the pit of his chest that he doesn’t fully understand - it’s not jealousy, not anything close to jealousy, but. 

He’s stayed up late wiping blood off her skin for too many nights to not have developed a deep-seated natural worry for the all-around well-being of the woman in the bedroom. And just the thought of someone,  _ anyone _ , uniform or not, interacting with her with anything other than the purest intentions -  _ God _ , he’s probably going to develop an ulcer over all of this.

“He’s a good dude.” Doug says suddenly, snapping Vinny back to the present. He clears his throat and turns his head away, toward the window, where the sky is rapidly plunging toward an inky purple-black color. “A good man. And that’s all I’m gonna say.”

The burning sensation in his chest soothes down to a faint twinge - curiosity, more than anything else - but Vinny swallows and nods. “God, she’s in really deep shit right now, isn’t she?”

Doug huffs out a laugh completely devoid of any trace of humor. “You have no idea, kid.”

* * *

 

The body falls in what witnesses will later describe as slow-motion, dimly illuminated in brief flashes by the red-blue-red-blue strobe lights surrounding the warehouse below.

* * *

“Alright, we gotta do something about our girl,” Gina says decisively.

Rosa hardly glances up from her computer screen. “There’s nothing we can do, we’ve been over this a million times -”

“ _ Not _ Amy. I’m talking about Jake. God, keep up.”

Rosa’s eyes flash up to Gina for a brief moment. “Right... _ my _ mistake.”

“I’ve never seen him like this before.” Gina says as she examines her nails. “Like, honestly, he wasn’t even this emotional after his  _ dad _ left.”

“Probably because he knew on some level that his dad’s a useless piece of shit.” Rosa says, tapping away at her keyboard once again. “Also that was just one shitty thing that happened. He’s dealing with, like, three shitty things now.”

“Four.” Rosa pauses and glances up again, one of her eyebrows quirked. “I walked in on Charles in the break room leaving him a voicemail of him cry-singing ‘Memories’ from  _ Cats  _ while Jake was on patrol yesterday.”

They both shiver.

“Alright, well, we can threaten Charles to get him to stop singing, but the other three -” Gina vaguely registers the elevator doors dinging somewhere behind her, or that Rosa’s gaze flits to the source of the sound for half a second “- are gonna be a little harder. ‘Specially with that witch still flying high on her broom.”

Gina turns and spots Chief Wuntch sweeping into the bullpen in all of her frigid glory and she has to work very hard to stop herself from retching. There’s a distinctly new edge of glee in the way her eyes scan the room, as though she’s feeding off of the heavy despair hanging off of every crevice before her. And there’s something about the way her face seems to curl in on itself that reminds Gina of a certain evil sea urchin in desperate need of a soul.

“Team,” Wuntch calls, and from the corner of her eye Gina can see Rosa grinding her teeth. The flurry of activity around the edges of the room pauses, every eye turned toward Wuntch. “I wanted to drop by and let you all know how much we appreciate your cooperative attitudes toward the  _ many  _ staff changes that have occurred around this precinct in recent months.” The Vulture emerges from his office, insufferable smirk on his face, and leans against the doorframe. “I know it hasn’t been easy making so many transitions in so little time. Please know that we at One Police Plaza appreciate your sacrifices, and our doors are always open if you have any questions or concerns.”

Rosa scoffs quietly.

“Captain Pembroke, do you have a moment to meet with me?”

He nods and shoves back from the doorframe as Wuntch glides toward him. The moment his office door shuts, Rosa twists away from her desk and grabs her coat from the back of her chair. “I gotta go.” She mutters.

“Wait, what? Where are you -” Gina hops off the desk as Rosa slings her backpack over one shoulder “- wait, I wanna go!”

Rosa stops and turns back. “You can’t.” She says with a shrug. “I’m going to interview a witness.”

“For what case? I know for a fact you finished the Paulsen murders last Tuesday and you haven’t had a major case since then, so don’t try to pretend like you’ve got some big mystery case that I don’t know about.” Gina scurries around and stands, arms crossed over her chest and hip cocked, between Rosa and the exit. “Where are you going, for real?”

Rosa huffs, glances around the rest of the precinct, and then edges closer. “Fine. I’m going to meet with Doug Judy.” She mutters.

“You’re still meeting with him?” Gina hisses incredulously.

“This’ll be the first time since before the demotion.” They both glance at the Vulture’s office at that; through the partially open blinds, they can see Wuntch leaned over his desk, hands planted wide on either side of her hips, while he shows her something on his computer. “He texted me last night and said he needed to tell me something important. I told him that if it isn’t life or death, I can’t.” She meets Gina’s eye then, solid and steady, and beneath her dark irises Gina can see a whole slew of emotions she’s never seen there before swirling and churning. “He said it is.”

Gina swallows thickly. “I’ll cover for you.”

She gets a text thirty minutes later, just as Wuntch emerges from the Vulture’s office:

_From:_ _Diazzzzzzz  
_ _They murdered one of her guys in front of her. She’s going to France w the abuser.  
_ __Received: 3:14 PM

Gina quickly taps out a response:

_To:_ _Diazzzzzzz  
_ _All she had 2 do was find the european base right? It’s almost over?  
_ __Sent: 3:14 PM

 _From:_ _Diazzzzzzz  
_ _Yes.  
_ __Received: 3:15 PM  


“Yo, secretary!” Gina is once again faced with the urge to retch at the sound of the Vulture’s customary call for her. “Get in here!”

“What’s up, boss?” She says with as much enthusiasm as she can force out when she bounds inside.

“My dry cleaning’s ready to be picked up.” He says absently, eyes glued to his computer screen.

“Okay?”

He shoots her a glare over the top of the screen. “Go get it.”

“That’s really not -”

“I can find another personal assistant in a heartbeat, you know.”

Gina clenches her jaw and tightens her grip around her cell phone to the point where she’s fairly certain it’s going to shatter in her hand. “Okay.” She forces out mock-cheerily. “I’ll be back in a little while.”

He grunts and waves her off and, once she’s gotten her coat on and has stooped to gather her purse, she taps out one last message to Rosa:

_To:_ _Diazzzzzzz  
_ _I_ _t’s about damn time  
_ __Sent: 3:17 PM

* * *

The body hurtles toward the water like the final leaf of autumn plunges into winter’s patiently reaching grasp.

* * *

It’s raining in Brooklyn and Jake doesn’t have an umbrella. Poor planning on his part, really, and even though feeling the negative consequences of said phenomenon isn’t exactly foreign to him, it still catches him off-guard. He’s been a bit preoccupied with things besides the weather lately.

Still, he curses as he pulls the car out of the parking garage just to be immediately pelted with a sheet of rain so thick it’s nearly white. He fumbles for a second before finding the windshield wiper switch: the squad car’s layout is so different from his normal car, currently parked up on the fifth floor of this same garage.

He has to close his eyes and swallow the wave of nausea that winds up deep in the center of his chest as his mind inevitably begins to spiral - his parking spot is different because he’s been demoted because his captain is gone and his partner and best friend is gone -

But that was three weeks ago - the demotion, at least - and he’s been dutifully showing up for his patrols every day since (except for the day after his Alley Encounter, as he’d started thinking of it; he couldn’t even get out of bed that day, much less patrol Brooklyn). But he’s been keeping at it, chugging right along just like he knows she wants him to, and it’s only partially because he lives with a deep-seated belief that if he works hard enough, the universe will recognize it and reward him justly.

Partially. But that part gets smaller and smaller every day.

It helps that he'd peeled her note to him - the one reminding him not to be an idiot - down from his front door. It's now a regular fixture to this squad car's dashboard, a constant reminder to keep his head down and his nose to the grindstone, because he knows that's what she wants.

The streets are virtually empty, the only people out smothered beneath dark rain jackets and black umbrellas, heads bowed against the downpour. He drives, scanning the scurrying figures as best he can through the haze, until his eyes slide out of focus and his instincts take over. He navigates that weird not-his car through the streets of Brooklyn until the buildings grow sparse and the suburbs crop up. He’s not sure where he is until he gets there, and when he puts the car in park, all he can do is stare for a moment.

The wreath on the front door is different from the one that was up the last time he was here; this one is a bit more fall-appropriate. It’s made of brown, orange, and yellow felt cut into the shapes of trees and leaves and it looks as though it has seen much better days. He has a brief memory of a photograph of his small, seven-year-old self smiling awkwardly in front of an apartment door he only vaguely remembers; this wreath was hanging above his head.

The rain is still pouring and Jake tries not to think about the fact that his hair is totally plastered to his forehead when he knocks on Karen Peralta’s front door.

He hears Karen shout something inside the house, but her voice is lost in the rush of the rain to Jake’s right. He crosses his arms over his middle and bounces a bit on the balls of his feet, trying to generate some warmth, suddenly freezing. Footsteps fade in quickly from the interior of the house, a lock disengages and then the door splits open.

Karen freezes, eyes widening in recognition. “Jake?” She steps forward, hand drifting up absently to her chest, as though grabbing at a necklace Roger gave her while they were dating that she stopped wearing on Jake’s twelfth birthday.

His composure lasts all of four seconds before the first deep, earth-quaking fissure cracks down the center. “Ma,” he says, and his voice is like scraped knees and elbows and grade-school bullies’ taunting laughs. She opens the door wider just as the crease between her brows deepens, and there’s the second fissure: this one feels like bad grades and anxiously waiting for teacher conferences and ‘you can do better than this’ and ‘you’ll never be good enough.’

“Honey?” Her voice is soft, so soft, and when she lifts her arms up - tentatively - the third and final fissure shoots across whatever’s left of his composure. He feels himself dissolving and it’s Roger leaving and Teddy getting there first and Sophia not loving him back and Maliardi getting away and not being enough, not  _ ever  _ being enough, being useless and worthless and a waste of humanity.

She pulls him in by the tie cinched too tightly around his neck and he stumbles over the threshold because his vision is far too blurred to see that trick step clearly and then he’s folded against her, weeping into her shoulder, crying harder than he’s ever cried in his miserable life. He hears the door close behind him and Karen shushing him, her fingers warm but unsteady as they card through the dripping curls at the nape of his neck. He clings to her, clings to the loose folds of her blouse, and it doesn’t register that he’s probably ruining her clothes until she gently readjusts his head and the dampness on her shoulder presses against his cheek.

“Jake, sweetheart, you’re scaring me,” she says over and over again. “It’s okay, everything’s okay, but you have to calm down and tell me what’s wrong. Sh, you’re okay, you’re gonna be okay.”

Eventually, the violence of it all tapers off, until the tears are dripping slowly and silently off the tip of his nose. The sound of the rain is muted now but it still pelts against the front window just behind him; it’s only interrupted by an occasional quiet sniffle from him and the steady drip of rainwater from his bent elbows and tears from the end of his nose against the carpet beneath his feet.

“There, now, see?” Her voice is warm and comforting and his eyelids begin to droop of their own accord. “Everything’s okay. Everything’s okay. C’mon, you can go take a nice hot shower to warm up and I’ll find something dry for you to wear. Does that sound nice?”

He nods mutely against her shoulder, like a pathetic child, and she pulls away from him slowly. He rubs his eyes blearily with his left hand as she takes his right, and he shuffles forward blindly, his mother leading the way to the bathroom.

“I want you to give me all your wet clothes and I’m gonna put them in the dryer while you take a shower. I’ll find you something warm and dry, okay? I’ll wait right here.”

He hands her his uniform in a wad through the crack in the door where it slips between Karen’s hands and hits the floor with a dull  _ splat _ , and after a brief, mumbled apology, he turns the hot water on and steps in under the spray. Steam rises from his frigid skin instantly and the contrast is so drastic it actually feels as though his skin is burning, but he relishes in it, standing under that punishing heat until his skin is pink and his mind is numb.

It isn’t until the hot water has faded to cold that he finally shuts the tap off and steps out. There’s a stack of folded clothes just inside the door, and as he towels off, he recognizes the logo on the shirt as that of his old asthma camp. The material is worn and a little faded and it’s really a size too small now, but it doesn’t matter; it’s familiar and it smells like his mom and that, combined with the grey sweatpants he thought he’d lost, is almost as good as a hug from her in real life.

Karen changed while he was showering and he can hear the dryer rumbling on the other side of the house as he pads back into the living room; she looks up at him over a steaming mug of what he can only assume is hot chocolate, before pointing to an identical mug on the coffee table before her. “Sit,” she chirps, and he does. He sinks into the cushions and exhales slowly, feeling every muscle come unknotted, and after a moment she tuts and leans forward to grab his mug and thrusts it into his hands.

He can see her watching him from the corner of his eye, but he chooses to focus on not spilling anything down his front as he tips the mug toward his mouth. The moment the liquid touches his tongue, a thousand memories come flooding back - sitting in this very spot, sometimes with Gina, sometimes with Nana, always with a steaming mug of hot chocolate in his hands. Sometimes his mother had smudges of paint on her face but she always sat there with him, a warm and solid presence to laugh with him and listen to him and cry with him.

He resolves right then and there to save every spare penny from his upcoming paychecks so that he can afford the birthday and mother’s day she deserves.

“So, um, how - how are you?” He asks once he’s drained half the mug.

“Oh, you know. Same ol’. I tried that pottery class the lesbians across the street invited me to. It was fun, but it wasn’t really my thing.”

Amy talked about wanting to try pottery, months ago, when she was still with Teddy. He wonders if she ever got a chance to try it.

He tries to smile, but he can tell by her expression that it isn’t reaching his eyes. “That’s nice,” he tries, “how are they?”

“Carol’s ex-husband is getting remarried next weekend, so she and Susan asked me to water their plants while they’re gone to the wedding.”

He smiles, the memory of her peeking out the blinds the day they moved in across the street coming back to him in vivid color. “You can’t snoop, ma.”

“I’m not gonna snoop! What kind of woman do you take me for? And, besides, even if I  _ did _ snoop, they’d never know.”

Jake chuckles and shakes his head. “They’re gonna know. You’re the most obvious spy in the world.”

She rolls her eyes but laughs good-naturedly, and for a moment, he forgets everything that has gone wrong. Her house always has that effect on him; the familiar warm colors are as comforting as a childhood blanket. Everything about this room is almost exactly the same as it was when they moved in all those years ago, except for a few small details - a new painting here, an art-deco clock she’d found in a garage sale there. He glances to the right and freezes.

There’s a framed photograph of him and the rest of the squad right next to the television. In it, he’s got an arm slung around Amy’s shoulders, and they’re both smiling breathlessly at the camera. He remembers the moments leading up to that photograph like they’d only just happened: laughing, teasing, playing,  _ them. _ It steals his breath away.

“You wanna talk about it?” She asks after a quiet moment.

He sighs and leans forward to replace the mug slowly, suddenly unable to meet her gaze. “I...can’t.” He mumbles.

She tuts again, and the sound grates against his ears. “Jake, honey, of  _ course _ you can. Keeping things like this bottled up is the  _ worst thing _ you can do for yourself. Honestly, that’s probably a major part of the reason you ended up bursting like that -”

“Mom, it’s not, like, my choice. I can’t talk about it because it’s a - a really big thing. An FBI thing.”

Despair flashes in her eyes. “They’re not sending you back undercover again, are they?” She asks, her voice trembling.

“No, no, it’s not me this time.”

Relief shoots across her face, and a familiar twist of guilt takes root in his gut.

“They...they sent Amy.”

She doesn't respond right away, and when he glances up, her eyes are wide and her lips are pressed together in a thin line. “Amy...your partner?” She asks slowly.

He nods, ignoring the wave of heat that rises up in his face. There’s a lump in his throat. He wonders if anyone has ever suffocated because of an emotional throat-lump before. “I’m not supposed to...talk about it,” he says carefully, gaze fixated once again on his mug. “But she’s in a really dangerous situation.  _ Really _ dangerous.”

She shifts forward and grips his forearm tightly. “Well, so were you, and you made it out okay.”

“Yeah, but it’s different this time. She’s…” he bites out a sigh and pinches the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger. “She’s in a much more vulnerable position than I was. The captain randomly chose her for this assignment and I  _ know  _ she’s capable and everything, but...she’s surrounded by really,  _ really _ bad people, and…” he vaguely registers the fact that his hands are still trembling when he sets the mug down on the coffee table and runs them through his hair. “If they figure out who she really is, they’ll...they’ll kill her.”

Karen clicks her tongue and squeezes his forearm again. “I know you’re scared, sweetheart.” She says softly, rubbing his arm in a soothing rhythm. “I  _ know _ how much she means to you.”

He’s tired. So tired. “Ma -”

“You don’t realize how often you talk about her, do you?” She interrupts softly.

He closes his eyes and sees Amy’s panic-stricken face outside his apartment door, feels her hands tripping up his back and her lips ghosting across his throat. He swallows thickly, unable to fight the heat that rises up from the center of his chest to color his neck and cheeks and ears. “I just...she shouldn't have gone in alone. I  _ hate  _ that I'm not there for her. I’m her  _ partner _ , I’m supposed to have her back.”

“I can’t even begin to understand how that must feel. Couldn’t you talk to Captain Holt about your concerns?”

He laughs, quiet and bitter, and fists his hands in his hair. “No, actually, I can’t. Holt’s not at the Nine-Nine anymore.”

She jerks back, eyes wide, nails biting briefly into his skin. “He  _ quit _ ?”

“No, no, no, he got...well, he got a promotion to Public Relations -”

Her grip loosens. “Oh. Well, isn’t that a good thing?”

“ _ No _ .”

“Jake, honey,” she shifts toward him on the couch and pulls him closer to her, so that he’s half-leaning against her side. “I know Captain Holt is important to you. Don’t you think showing him some support would make the transition a little easier on him?”

“No, ma, you don’t...he, um, he didn’t  _ want _ the promotion.”

“And how do you -”

“I just know.” Jake interrupts quickly. “It was a political thing, it’s complicated. But I know, for  _ sure _ , that he  _ did not _ want that promotion. They kind of forced him to take it, actually.” She squeezes his arm again and tears spring up in his eyes. “And so we got this new captain, Captain Dozerman, and he picked Amy twenty seconds after meeting her for this mission, and the next day he had a heart attack and died in the precinct break room.”

“Oh, sweetheart, that’s  _ awful _ .”

“Yeah, and it gets worse. They brought in a  _ guy  _ -” her brows quirk together at his suddenly acidic tone “- from Major Crimes to take over as captain and he’s - he  _ hates  _ me, ma.”

“I’m sure he doesn’t -”

“He demoted me back down to beat.”

Her face falls slack with shock at that admission, but to her credit, she recovers quickly. “Oh, Jake,” she says softly, her fingers curling through his still-damp hair once again.

“I don’t even - I don’t even  _ care  _ about the demotion. I’d stay beat for the rest of my  _ life  _ if it meant Holt could come back to the Nine-Nine and Amy would come home safe. I just -” he lets his head fall heavily to her shoulder and she automatically curls her arm around both of his, pulling him closer, embracing him gently. Tears fall freely down his face, dripping down his long nose and tapping dully against his hands where they rest in his lap. “I want them to come  _ back _ .”

“It’s gonna be okay,” she says, but her voice quivers beneath the weight of her own uncertainty. He feels her press a kiss to the top of his head and he’s twelve years old again, wearing a lopsided party hat and his shattered heart on his sleeve, his head full of moppy curls cradled in his mother’s arms.

“Why won’t they come back?”


	9. and the two of us went up in smoke (b)

As the body nears the churning waters below, a spotlight from a nearby boat catches it, casting a long, ghostly shadow across the storm-weathered bay-facing wall of the warehouse for one endless second.

* * *

As it turns out, Paris is lovely in November. It is just as romantic as Amy always imagined it would be - at least, the bits and pieces she gets to see for the half hour she and Archie are actually there seem to be as romantic as she always imagined it to be.

However, the village of Oiseau Blessé, which is approximately two hours northeast of Paris by car, is just as beautiful, though not nearly as metropolitan. There’s a loneliness to it, though, an air of long-forgotten grandeur; the most prominent feature of that little village is the factory, abandoned since the end of the second world war, now a desolate ghost of a building nearly overrun by Mother Nature’s slowly tightening grasp. Archie parks the car around the back, away from the tiny dirt road that arches in a long and graceful bow toward the front, and as Amy climbs out she tightens her grip around the phone in her pocket.

This is the pinnacle of her assignment, the task she set out all those months ago to do. Archie lumbers ahead of her, hissing at the crows gathered around the base of a nearby tree, and while his back is turned, she quickly pulls the phone out and snaps a photograph of the building. She taps the screen quickly and nearly panics at the quiet  _ whoosh! _ of an outgoing email.

The tracking device in this phone would still work with the sound turned off, the note that came with it three days before she left for France told her.

“C’mon,” Archie half-shouts over his shoulder. She scurries up the slope toward him as he bangs his fist against the rusted, faded blue double doors concealing the interior of the building from the outside world. “Hate France,” he mutters when she’s close enough to hear him. “Always cold and always muddy.”

“It’s just the climate,” Amy says absently.

He grunts and kicks at a loose lump of grass. “Climate sucks,” he says. “It should be like New York everywhere.”

She hums faintly just as echoing footsteps approach from the inside of the building, and her heart shoots to her throat as the doors begin jiggling and groaning in protest against the person inside attempting to open them. She grips the phone in her pocket so hard that the edges bite harshly into her curled fingers and Archie sighs loudly and steps forward to add his own brute strength to the struggle.

Finally, the doors swing open, and she  _ swears _ a wall of dust cascades like fog from the inside of the building. From the shadows emerges a figure, fading into the shaft of light pouring in from the outside slowly. Archie steps between them just before she gets a look at the man’s face, and Amy holds her breath.

“My man,” the newcomer says, slapping Archie’s hand and pulling him in for a brief one-armed hug. Amy shifts her weight nervously, trying and failing to choke her panic down. Archie steps away and, for the first time ever, Amy finds herself face-to-face with Freddy Maliardi.

He’s gained a decent amount of weight compared to the skeletal mugshot she’s seen taped to the bottom corner of Jake’s computer monitor at work for nearly a year now (actually, over a year, technically; a year, three weeks, and six days, to be exact). He looks healthier, all things considered. His skin is still a shade too pale and his eyes are a bit too watery and buggy, but overall he looks almost exactly the way she’s always pictured him to look. “You must be Melissa,” he says through a thick Brooklyn accent, and Amy adopts her brightest smile.

“And  _ you  _ must be Freddy,” she says, stepping forward to quickly shake his hand. He takes her hand and pulls her in for a hug with it, and while his arms are squeezing around her middle she briefly flashes back to the time Jake unloaded every single awful, terrible crime this man alone committed at two in the morning while they were on a stakeout together. She closes her eyes and can still see his face, pale and creased, not a single ounce of humor in his eyes.

_ “I’m not kidding, Ames, he was -  _ God, _ he was the worst one of them all. A cold-blooded killer. I can’t  _ stand  _ that he got away. I lose sleep at night thinking about it.” _

Freddy pulls away from her, smiling merrily, and Amy swallows thickly. “Come inside!” He says loudly, turning back toward the interior of the building with a grand sweeping motion. His voice carries and echos back to him through the cavernous factory that appears to be completely gutted and reduced to a single building-sized room. It takes a moment for her eyes to adjust, but the moment they do she’s drawn toward what appears to be a staircase descending through the floor to the basement below, from which light is emitting. “We run our operation from downstairs,” Freddy explains once he’s followed her gaze. “Reduces all the noise and light pollution so we can stay a little more inconspicuous, y’know?”

“Of course,” Amy says, and her voice is too high because she’s standing next to the man Jake once witnessed beat another man to death with the curved end of a crowbar. Archie’s already trudging toward the stairs, apparently indifferent to the sharp cold edge in the air that cuts all the way down to her bones. She clenches her jaw to keep her teeth from shattering and only jumps a little bit when Freddy presses his hand against her lower back, guiding her toward the stairs.

“C’mon, I’ll give you the grand tour.”

Aside from nearly tripping and falling down the stairs, Amy stays pretty level-headed, all things considered. She manages to keep her face coolly unaffected despite the fact that the entire lower level - which, again, is all one big room - is set up like a giant meth lab. Or, rather, like several normal-sized meth labs all side-by-side in one big room.

Amy really hates the fact that she knows what an average-sized meth lab looks like.

“Right, so, we cook a lot of the stuff here,” Freddy points in the general direction of the first four labs, “and a lot of the stuff we harvest is refined down there,” he points to the further four, which, now that Amy’s looking a little closer, have a slightly different set of equipment spread across the tables. “Nobody’s here today - one of our guys got taken out in a shootout with the cops, rest his soul - so I gave ‘em all the day off to go drink in his honor. It’s always hard losin’ one of the crew, y’know?”

Archie makes a noise of agreement as he examines a gallon-sized bag full of what look like blue crystals.

“So you - you only give a day off when one of them passes?” Amy asks carefully.

Freddy eyes her curiously. “Yeah. Why?”

“Well, I just - I always gave my guys three whenever someone - um,” Amy looks away quickly and clears her throat. “Whenever a pig interfered.” She says, a bit more confidently.

Freddy nods slowly, like he’s considering it. “Three days, eh? Must’a been nice. For your guys, I mean. I can’t afford to have this place down for more than a day, though. We got products to push.”

“Right.”

“I never even heard your name while you were workin’ for the Iannucci’s,” he says quietly. “They tell me you was the arms dealer from the West Coast?”

“Yeah, near Napa Valley.”

“Never heard about an arms dealer from Napa Valley. Whose kid did you say you were again?”

His gaze is hard on her face, and a dripping cold that has nothing to do with the weather winds down her spine in response. “I didn’t.” She says coolly, lifting her chin a fraction.

There’s a moment in which Amy looks Freddy Maliardi in the eye and reconsiders every choice she’s ever made that has lead her to this moment. Jake told her Freddy wasn’t exactly the brightest bulb, but he certainly wasn’t the dullest, either. And anyone with even the most basic detective skills and minimal knowledge of the situation would probably be able to dismantle her entire undercover persona in less than ten minutes flat.

A smile creeps across his face slowly. “I like you,” he says. “You got attitude.”

Right. Ten minutes is all she really needs, anyways.

“Yo, Freddy! What the hell is this shit?”

Freddy twists away and jogs over to where Archie stands, and Amy quickly pulls her phone from her pocket and begins snapping pictures with trembling hands.

* * *

A disembodied and animalistic scream echoes from that same rooftop just second after the body begins its’ rapid descent.

* * *

When Ray steps out of his vehicle in front of the Nine-Nine, he refuses to pause. So his breath may catch and his grip around the edge of the door may be a bit harder than necessary, who cares? His chin is high and his jaw is set.

It doesn’t matter that his heart is thundering harder than the earth-shattering moments before Mount Vesuvius’ eruption.

He strides inside with long, purposeful steps, ignoring the three beat cops who fall silent upon recognizing him as he makes his way toward the elevator. He feels their eyes studying his back, and he assures himself that it is because of his now-legendary status around this precinct and  _ not _ because they have just spotted a verified ghost.

A voice not unlike Gina’s begins narrating a fantastical mental image of his former squad welcoming him back with a roaring applause - of Keith Pembroke bowing and stepping aside, handing his Captain’s hat over, of children dancing in the street as news of Madeline Wuntch’s untimely demise breaks on the televisions. He and Kevin sit in his office, admiring the fluidity of his team through the open windows.

_ That _ would be dreadful.

Of course, when the elevator doors open, the reception he receives is...underwhelming. Granted, he’s only greeted by the sight of one familiar face - Terry’s, currently twisted in immense anxiety, a thin sheen of sweat glistening beneath the light of his computer screen. Terry’s eyes flicker up to the elevator half a moment after Ray steps out and light up upon recognizing him.

“Captain Holt,” he says, his usual enthusiasm restrained. Ray resists a powerful urge to frown as Terry rises from his desk and trudges toward him, hand outstretched to shake his. “What brings you to the Nine-Nine?”

“He’s here to see me, dummy.” An irritatingly oily voice snarls from the Captain’s office. Terry freezes, his entire body tense, eyes shutting briefly as a wave of unpleasantness washes over them both. Keith Pembroke emerges from the Captain’s office, traipsing forward slowly, tossing a half-eaten apple and catching it again with his right hand. His left is buried in his pocket - all in all, completely unprofessional. “I’m being interviewed for the New York Times. Front page.”

“A reporter will be taking your statement regarding the Paulsen murders, which Detective Diaz solved. And it likely won’t be on the front page.”

Pembroke’s gaze flickers to Ray’s face. “So when is the photographer getting here?”

“There is no photographer.” Ray says slowly.

“Then what’s the  _ point? _ ” Pembroke snaps.

“It’s good to see you again, Captain,” Terry says, reaching to shake his hand once again.

“Ah ah ah, I don’t think so,” Pembroke wags his finger at Terry. “That’s a form of inappropriate touching in the workplace. I don’t want another sexual harassment charge on my record.”

“You’re not even the one doing the  _ touching  _ this time,” Terry mutters. He shoots Ray an apologetic glance and retreats back to his desk.

Ray does his best to keep his chin high, but his gaze is inevitably drawn to the two desks outside of his old office; both are abnormally clear, coated in a noticeable layer of dust. And despite the fact that his face remains stoic, his mind kicks into overdrive:  _ where are all of Peralta’s trinkets? Has he moved desks so that he no longer has to face the emptiness every day, just as Ray has taken to sleeping on the couch downstairs just to avoid being near the empty stretch of mattress usually filled by Kevin’s presence? _

When no obvious clues present themselves to his carefully wandering eyes, he feels his heart sink slowly and steadily toward his toes.

“Alright, let’s get this over with,” Pembroke sighs loudly, dropping into his seat and kicking his feet up on the desk. Ray chokes down a wave of annoyance at the sight - a memory of  _ get your feet off my desk, Peralta _ echoing through his mind - and inhales deeply.

“Because this is a positive interaction with the press, you’ll want to keep your remarks short and focused on the detective who solved it.” Pembroke grunts, kicks his feet off the desk, and turns toward his computer. His eyes begin scanning his computer screen. Ray edges forward slowly, keeping his movements as casual and unnoticeable as possible. The screen is turned at a slight angle, as though Pembroke had turned it recently toward someone on the other side of the desk. “One to two sentences will be more than sufficient for this statement. Something along the lines of, ‘Detective Diaz worked tirelessly alongside the rest of the Nine-Nine to solve this crime. Our thoughts are now with the Paulsen family while they -’”

Pembroke knocks his knuckles against the desktop loudly. “Yeah, I’ve talked to the press before. I’m not an idiot.” He snaps, hardly even glancing up at Ray, who is now at the far corner of the desk, half-leaned to the left. He’s looking at what appears to be blueprints. An address is printed at the top of the page, which Ray has memorized in seconds. “Why’d they even bother sending some has-been pencil pusher in here?”

Ray clenches his jaw for a brief moment. “It’s customary for a member of the Public Relations department to -”

“To what? To show up at the precinct they used to run like some washed up high school hero turned complete and total loser? Nobody here cares that you’re gone, bro. Give it up. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some actual police work to do.”

Ray blinks rapidly and steps back from the desk. “Thank you for your time, Captain.” He says stiffly. “I wondered if I might have a word with Detective Diaz?”

“She left to go do something. I dunno, the secretary told me but I wasn’t listening.”

“Gina? Is she...is she around?”

“Nah. I sent her out to get my dry cleaning.”

“And Detective Boyle?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care.”

“Detective Peralta?”

Pembroke’s gaze flits up to Ray’s face. There’s something almost gleeful about the smirk that flashes across his face as he leans back in his chair again, something sinister in the way his eyes spark. “Oh, you didn’t hear?” He asks, kicking his feet up to the desk once again. “It’s  _ Officer _ Peralta now. I demoted him. Your little boy toy is a beat cop again.”

There’s a beat, a long pause, in which Ray is nothing but a vessel of barely-contained rage. It courses through his veins like fire and poison, shooting from an epicenter at his heart to the very tips of his furthest extremities, and in his mind’s eye it shoots from his body and engulfs the entire precinct in flames, breaking and destroying everything in its’ path until all that’s left is a charred pile of ashes.

But then it’s gone, replaced instead with a quiet laser focus Ray only ever feels at the beginning of a long but rewarding case. He feels himself nodding slowly, registering after a few seconds’ delay the flash of uncertainty he’d seen spark in Pembroke’s eyes during the pause. “Very well.” He says, and Pembroke’s face falls by a fraction. “I’ll reach out to Detective Diaz via email. Thank you for your time.”

He strides out of the precinct, glancing briefly at Terry as he passes (Terry perks up for a moment, but he’s already hunched over the computer again by the time Ray is in the elevator). And as the elevator doors close, Ray quickly types the address from the blueprints into Google Maps on his phone.

It pulls up the image of an old warehouse down by the docks just outside of Brooklyn.


	10. and the two of us went up in smoke (c)

On the evening of November 17th, George Fumero drafts a message to be sent to everyone in his respective family, calling an emergency meeting at the warehouse.

Vinny Riviero and Doug Judy lay in wait in Melissa Iannucci’s apartment, anxious to ensure that she’d made it back from Europe in one piece.

Amy Santiago disembarks an international flight from Paris at JFK International Airport, carrying with her a single carry-on and the knowledge that somewhere behind her is Archie, walking alongside Freddy Maliardi.

Charles Boyle, Terry Jeffords, and Gina Linetti begin packing up their respective belongings, tiredly discussing the possibility of stopping by Shaw’s for a drink before heading off to their respective homes.

Keith Pembroke prepares for what is going to be the biggest night of his career.

Rosa Diaz settles in for a long night of completing paperwork, nodding and waving as the remaining members of her squad prepare to leave.

Ray Holt busily researches that old warehouse down by the docks even as the rest of PR heads home for the evening.

And Jake Peralta slides into the driver’s seat of an NYPD squad car to begin his eight-hour overnight patrol.

* * *

It begins at 7:08 PM with a text message.

Well, really, it begins years earlier, when George Fumero and his brothers first discovered exactly how much monetary fortune lies in the way of trafficking high-quality European drugs in America.

It begins months earlier, when the FBI begins organizing a task force to dismantle the Fumero drug cartel and chooses to use an NYPD detective to go undercover.

It begins hours earlier, when Freddy Maliardi places a phone call to George Fumero outside of an abandoned warehouse in the village of Oiseau Blessé.

But on the evening of the 17th, it begins with a text message.

 _From: George Fumero  
_ _911\. Warehouse. 15 mins._  
Received: 7:08 PM

Amy reads the message from the backseat of the car while Archie reads an identical one in halting glances from the driver’s seat. Freddy’s gaze is steady out the window, eyes slipping over the skyline of New York. Doug and Vinny read the message simultaneously on the couch in Melissa’s apartment, exchanging a nervous glance.

“Have you heard from her since they landed?” Vinny asks as they both stand.

“Nah. I’m about to text her.”

 _To: Melissa Eyenoochy  
_ _U ok?_  
Sent: 7:08 PM

He gets the response as they climb into his car:

 _From: Melissa Eyenoochy  
_ _I’m fine. Do you know what this is about?_  
Received: 7:10 PM

 _To: Melissa Eyenoochy  
_ _Idk  
_ _Sent: 7:10 PM_

 _From: Melissa Eyenoochy  
_ _Maliardi is with me.  
_ __Received: 7:11 PM__

_From: Melissa Eyenoochy  
_ _Is Vinny ok?  
_ ___Received: 7:11 PM__ _

_To: Melissa Eyenoochy  
_ _Forreal? Didnt peralta arrest that guy?  
_ ____Sent: 7:11 PM__ _ _

_To: Melissa Eyenoochy  
_ _Hes good hes w me  
_ _____Sent: 7:12 PM__ _ _ _

_From: Melissa Eyenoochy  
_ _Don’t let him out of your sight.  
_ ______Received: 7:13 PM__ _ _ _ _

On the other side of Brooklyn, it begins with a harsh shout.

“Yo, dummies,” the Vulture calls from his office door. Rosa glances up from her paperwork; Terry, Charles, and Gina all pause at the elevator doors. “Who said you guys could bounce?”

“It’s seven o’clock,” Terry says uncertainly. “Our shifts are over.”

“Yeah? Well, now they’re not.”

Terry and Charles both deflate, while Gina releases a nasal whine. “What is it _now_?”

“We’re raiding a warehouse down by the docks tonight,” he says coolly, ignoring the chorus of groans that answer him. “Suit up, we gotta be through the doors in an hour. Don’t be late.”

He retreats back to his office and slams the door behind him, and with loud, reluctant sighs, the squad trudges back into the bullpen to deposit their belongings at their respective desks. Gina sinks back into her seat unenthusiastically while the others shuffle toward the back room, where their riot gear is stored.

Gina pulls out her phone and begins to text.

 _To:_ _Princess Peralta  
__Vulture called a raid on the warehouse so now im stuck here bored af_  
Sent: 7:11 PM

 _To:_ _Princess Peralta  
__Wyd ?  
__Sent: 7:11 PM_

 _From: Princess Peralta  
_ _Im patrollign  
_ __Received: 7:13 PM__

_From:_ _Princess Peralta  
__Did he say y?  
____Received: 7:14 PM___

 _To:_ _Princess Peralta  
__No but maybe he found a stock of penis enlargment pills and wants them to steal it 4 him  
_____Sent: 7:14 PM____

 _From:_ _Princess Peralta  
__Weird tell rosa or charles to txt u wehn they find out  
______Received: 7:16 PM_____

 _From:_ _Princess Peralta  
__And then txt me  
_______Received: 7:16 PM______

 _To: Princess Peralta  
_ _U got it girl  
_ _______Sent: 7:16 PM__ _ _ _ _ _

* * *

By the time Doug and Vinny finally arrive at the warehouse, pretty much everyone else is already there. Vinny scans the crowd quickly; Melissa’s not there yet. It’s 7:45 already; her plane landed more than half an hour ago, but with traffic he’s really not surprised that she’s not here yet.

He’s not surprised, but anxiety still ties a hangman’s knot with his stomach.

There are around thirty men milling around, clumped together in certain spaces, all around the edges of the room. They all speak in hushed tones and it’s like a tornado of whispers. And there at the epicenter of it all is George Fumero, seated in his usual armed chair, glaring at the floor, turning his cigar over in his fingers slowly. Vinny’s known since day one that George is dangerous, but this is the first time he’s seen all the evil previously hidden behind his carefully cultivated facade right there in the open.

He shifts closer to Doug as imperceptibly as he can.

They retreat toward the back of the room, near the emergency exit. They’re close enough that Vinny can hear the waves crashing against the docks some fifteen feet beyond the door, and he swallows thickly, because Frankie’s out there somewhere in a dufflebag at the bottom of the bay. He closes his eyes briefly and shakes his head, willing the memories away. He’s got enough on his plate without having to relive that again.

An immeasurable amount of time passes. Vinny can see the others shifting anxiously in his peripherals, but no one dares to speak to George. The quiet murmur of conversation stays just that: a quiet murmur.

It cuts off almost completely when the double doors swing open and Archie lumbers in. He hardly spares the rest of the room a glance, trudging across the floor toward his group near the staircase leading up to the second and third floors. Behind him comes Melissa, who seems to stop short for a brief second upon realizing the warehouse is as full as it is. She scans the room and spots Doug and Vinny, and makes a hasty retreat from the front doors toward them. She’s almost to them when another man, a man Vinny’s never seen before, appears in the doorway.

“Who’s that?” He whispers when she’s close enough to hear him.

“Freddy Maliardi.” She whispers back.

“A real bad dude,” Doug murmurs when Vinny glances up at him.

“Alright, everybody _shut up._ ” George shouts, his voice rising in a snarl over the quiet din. Silence immediately rumbles through the warehouse. “I called you all here tonight because we’re in some deep shit. _Deep_ shit. The Feds found our production site in France.” A murmur of surprise ripples through the group. “Police are raidin’ right now. All our guys, with the exception of Mr. Maliardi here, have been arrested.” From the corner of his eye, Vinny sees Melissa shift uneasily. “So we’re here to discuss next steps.”

“Doug,” Melissa hisses as the room dissolves into quiet whispers again. Vinny keeps his wide-eyed gaze fixated on George even as Doug shifts an inch closer. “Get outside. Call Rosa. Take Vinny.”

“No -” Vinny whispers.

Her fingers close briefly around his wrist. “You have to trust me.” She reminds him quietly.

It grates against every instinct in his body, but he allows himself to be pulled backwards slowly by a retreating Doug, who ducks behind one of the rows of boxes crowding the right side of the emergency exit. With careful and practiced movements, Doug eases the door open and motions for Vinny to slip out. Which he does.

And once he’s outside, he finds himself face-to-face with a woman decked out in head to toe with NYPD riot gear, staring down the barrel of her semi-automatic gun. Her eyes are as wide as saucers beneath her protective eyewear and Vinny immediately throws his hands in the air. But then her gaze flickers to something over his shoulder and her eyes somehow widen even further.

“Judy?” She says, her voice harsh and hoarse.

“Oh, shit,” comes Doug’s voice from behind him.

There’s a fraction of a second where all three are frozen, staring at each other in shock. And then the air is full of gunfire.

Vinny, for once, listens to his instincts. He spins on his heel and darts past Doug, right back into the building just before the emergency exit door closes. He dives to the right and ducks down below a row of shelves. The whole warehouse is in chaos; people in riot gear are pouring in like ants from the main door, bursting in through the windows, and the only discernable sound besides the deafening gunshots are screams of agony.

He tries to peek up over the shelves, but he can’t find Melissa anywhere in the flurry.

* * *

The warehouse, as it turns out, is owned by a man named Luke Vickers.

Luke Vickers is wanted in seventeen states for insurance fraud and tax evasion.

Luke Vickers is not a real person.

It takes the better part of Ray’s evening to realize it (until about five minutes before 8 o’clock, actually), but Luke Vickers is not a real person.

Still, logically, there’s no reason for the warehouse to be under his name. All property known to be owned by a criminal is seized by the government, and yet - the deed to this warehouse remains under Luke Vickers’ name.

Puzzling. Very puzzling.

Why does a man wanted in so many states - who doesn’t exist - own a seemingly abandoned warehouse down by the docks outside of Brooklyn?

Luckily, Ray thinks, this is far from his first case. Clearly Luke Vickers is a cover identity.

The question remains: for whom?

And, possibly the bigger question: why is Keith Pembroke interested in it?

Ray’s still pouring over the possibilities when his phone begins to ring: the name _Gina Linetti_ scrolls across his screen, and a long-forgotten ache echoes through his chest.

“Good evening, Gi-”

“You gotta go down to this warehouse, it’s off fifteenth street -”

He glances at the Post-It Note where he’d scribbled down the address: 10045 Fifteenth Street. “Gina, what’s going on?”

“I-I don’t know, Charles just called me, he said somethin’ about the raid -”

“What _raid_ -”

“It’s Amy, sir, Amy’s in the warehouse and - and they’re raiding it. I don’t know what’s going on, the Vulture told them it was just a normal raid, I don’t think any of them knew -”

“I’m on my way, Gina, please remain calm. I’ll let you know when I’ve arrived via text. Please stay at the precinct until then.”

He hangs up quickly, seizes his jacket from the back of his chair, and starts toward the door. As he walks briskly down the hallway, he dials a number he hasn’t used in several years.

“Agent Larson? Sorry to interrupt your evening. I just received a very alarming phone call from someone from my former precinct…”

* * *

If she survives this, Rosa’s going to absolutely murder the Vulture. She’s gonna murder him so hard.

“What do we do, what do we _do_?” Judy screams to her left. He’s fetal on the ground, leaned up against the outer warehouse wall.

She growls in response, too angry and focused on dialing the correct phone number to formulate an articulate response. The phone rings twice before she hears a weary “hello?” on the other end of the line.

“Get down to the docks off fifteenth street. _Now_.”

“I’m on patrol -”

“I don’t _give a shit_ , get _down here right now_.”

“What’s going on?”

“The Vulture, he -” she pauses and winces as a particularly dramatic scream echoes through the broken window somewhere behind her “- I still don’t know what’s going on but you need to get down here right now because we’re in a shootout with some people in a warehouse and I think Amy’s inside.”

Jake’s inhale is as ragged and harsh as she expects it to be; what she doesn’t expect is the shot of fear and adrenaline that surges through her system in response to the sound. “Wh- the docks off fifteenth - which warehouse, I -”

“You literally can’t miss it, trust me. Hurry up.”

The line immediately disconnects and Rosa shoves away from the wall. “Where are you going?” Judy demands.

“I gotta try to call this off.” Rosa barks over her shoulder. “You can’t stay here forever.”

“The kid went back in there, Amy told me to -”

“Look, Judy,” Rosa stalks back toward him and sinks down on one knee, leaning forward so that her face is just inches from his. “You always knew you were gonna have to run to make it out of this in one piece. Inside this warehouse, you’ll die. On the other side of this warehouse, you’ll be arrested.”

His wide-eyed gaze flickers to the bay before him, a dark and churning sea currently stretching on uninterrupted for miles.

“Run.” She whispers.

She stands, turns away, and starts running. She doesn’t look back.

The tech team is in place, lead by Charles (who is, for once, completely and totally serious and focused on the task at hand) and running smoothly by the time Rosa sprints back across the parking lot. She’s met at the gates by Terry, who’s looking at her with such wild concern she can only imagine what her face is betraying.

“Call them off,” she gasps.

“What’re you -”

“Amy’s in there.” She twists around and points at the warehouse, alive with the attack transpiring inside. Terry’s eyes nearly bulge out of his head; behind him, Charles’ head jerks up from the operations deck. “Call them off, _call them off!_ ”

“Diaz, it’s too late - even if we _did_ pull back, they know we’re here and they know we know who they are -”

It’s hard to hear the addition to the cacophonous chorus of sirens shrieking and wailing in the parking lot beyond where they stand, but the squealing tires - those jump out at her. Rosa shoves past Terry immediately, ignoring Charles’ half-shouting into the microphone to _pull back_ and sprinting to where Jake is tearing out of a squad car.

“Where is she?” He demands the second he’s out of the car.

“Still inside, let’s go!”

He keeps pace right beside her all the way across the parking lot and Rosa _swears_ they’re flying.

Inside, the scene has already deteriorated rapidly. While it’s obvious the cartel is outgunned and outnumbered, there are still quite a few of them holding their own, and she does her best not to look at the motionless bodies clad in riot gear lying on the warehouse floor.

She does her best to shield Jake, splaying her arms out on either side of him and essentially caging him in behind her. They edge along the wall quickly, Jake occasionally firing his Glock over Rosa’s shoulder when a cartel member gets too close, until they pause near a row of shelves near the emergency exit.

Jake pushes her toward the shelves, stepping out from behind her, presumably to get a better view of the chaos. “ _Amy!_ ” He bellows, just as someone on the staircase takes aim.

Rosa seizes him by the back of the shirt and twists, slamming Jake’s chest into the wall behind them. She feels harsh exhale forced from his lungs on impact, but she can’t actually hear it over the dizzying pops that collide with the wall where their heads were moments earlier. Jake grabs her elbows on instinct and he pulls until they’re both on the ground, ducked behind a row of boxes.

“You gotta stay behind me!” She shouts over the din. His eyes are wide when he nods frantically. She edges toward the box, straining to get a view of the side exit Judy came tripping out of earlier. “I think - _shit_ , I think we’ll have cover if we go around these boxes -”

There’s a commotion to her left and Rosa immediately launches herself forward, between Jake and this newcomer, who is at that moment a scrambling pile of limbs on the ground. Rosa’s gun is aimed, chest heaving, and the newcomer finally pushes herself into a crawling position and grabs at the gun on the ground to her right.

A pair of wild dark brown eyes, one edged with what appears to be a fresh cut just above her cheekbone, peer up at her through long raven hair, and Rosa’s breath catches in her throat.

“ _Amy_ ,” Jake chokes behind Rosa. He shoves past her blindly, jostling her enough that her gun is nearly knocked out of her hands, but he doesn’t notice. Jake skids to a stop on his knees before her, sweeping her into a bone-crushing hug just as Amy drops her gun and flings her arms around his neck. It doesn’t escape Rosa’s notice, even as she slowly lowers her own gun, that Amy’s hands are positively trembling where they scramble up Jake’s back, or that there’s nothing but pure terror in her eyes. The hailstorm of bullets is still raging beyond their pseudo-safe space, but Jake and Amy appear to be oblivious; in fact, as Rosa watches, they pull back just far enough to engage in a passionate kiss.

That goes on.

And on.

And on.

“Guys,” she tries. They don’t respond. “Hey.” She nudges Jake’s ankle with the toe of her boot, but he just pulls Amy closer. “Seriously?”

Still, nothing. So she hooks her foot beneath Jake’s ankle and yanks back, so that his knee is pulled out from beneath him and he ends up falling into Amy. They’re both panting (either from the physical exertion that comes with being in such a massive shootout or from the intensity of the kiss, she doesn’t know and she doesn’t ever _want_ to know) and staring up at her through wide eyes, as though she’d just walked in on them in bed together. She’s just opening her mouth when the air is suddenly rent apart by a loud, guttural scream from the other side of the boxes.

This seems to snap them both out of it. Jake quickly rolls off of Amy and they both scramble to their feet, casting quick, furtive glances at each other every few seconds.

They really aren’t going to make this easy on her.

“Santiago, are you armed?” Rosa asks. She nods quickly, eyes still wide, way too wide, like, it’s not healthy that they’re that wide or sunken into her head, has she eaten lately? Focus, not now. “Alright, okay, I think we can make it to the emergency exit if we stay behind these shelves -”

“I think the door’s stuck open so all we have to do is make a break for the door.” Amy interjects.

“Right. So we’ll go out the side door and run for the police line in case someone follows us out. Santiago, you need to stay behind me and Peralta because if they see you out of uniform they might just assume you’re one of them following us.” Jake casts and anxious glance down at Amy, who’s nodding seriously, gazing determinedly at Rosa. “Don’t stop until we make it to the line. Agreed?”

“Agreed.” They say in unison.

Rosa shrugs past them, edging along the wall behind the shelves. “You okay?” She hears Jake ask quietly.

If Amy responds, it’s lost in the onslaught of firing weapons and shouts of agony. They’ve reached the corner now, affording Rosa a clear view of the emergency exit. She glances back over her shoulder and is met with the sight of Jake and Amy’s faces, pale and sweaty and just a little bit scared, but nearly identical in determination. “Ready?”

They both nod.

Rosa takes off running and sound becomes garbled in her ears, almost like she’s hearing everything underwater. She sprints toward the door and makes a hard u-turn to her right, suddenly blasted with the cold night air outside the warehouse. It’s darker out here, the sounds of the shootout muffled behind thick warehouse walls, and a short distance away she can see the flashing red-and-blue lights of the SWAT vehicles and ambulances parked haphazardly at the far end of the parking lot. Her breath is loud and harsh in her ears and she thinks she can hear them running behind her, their footsteps a combined stampede against the parking lot concrete.

Terry suddenly appears at the edge of the mob, opening the gates quickly to welcome them in. Rosa bursts past him and jogs further in a few steps, slowing down gradually, until she’s doubled over with her hands on her knees.

“What happened?” She hears Terry demand.

“Don’t - it’s Santiago, she’s just not in uniform -”

“What are you talking about?”

Rosa straightens, irritated, and points behind her. “Santiago, that’s Santiago!”

Terry’s staring at her like she just told him the Kool-Aid Man is her real father. “Where?”

“What the hell is wrong with you, are you blind? She’s right -” her finger scans over Jake, who’s only just then straightening up, to an empty stretch of parking lot.

Jake glances back as her finger slowly lowers. “Amy?” He gasps.

“I-I don’t understand, she was right behind us -”

“Amy?”

“Diaz, are you sure it was really her?”

“Of course I’m sure, I’m not an idiot -”

“ _Amy!_ ”

“I’m not tryin’ to suggest that you’re an idiot, Diaz, I’m just saying in high-pressure situations like this - Jake, _no!_ ”

“ _Peralta_!” A new voice, one full of command, shouts from behind her. Rosa tries to grab the back of his shirt, but Jake’s too fast; already he’s a blur across the parking lot, sprinting for his life back toward the building.

“Captain Holt -” Terry says. Rosa whirls around and finds herself face-to-face with her former captain, who looks so utterly stoic even against the backdrop of such stomach-churning chaos.

“The FBI is on their way here at this very moment.” He says briskly. “This raid is completely unmandated and out of the Nine-Nine’s jurisdiction. Sergeant, _why_ is your precinct conducting this raid?”

Terry swallows thickly, before lifting his chin. “Captain Pembroke ordered us to.”

The ghost of a smile twitches across Holt’s face. “Very well.” He says, before turning on his heel. A dozen black SUVs pour into the parking lot and as Holt marches toward them, Rosa edges backwards toward the gates.

She glances down at her watch: 8:12. In twelve minutes, it’s all gone to hell. “This whole thing is fucked,” she mutters. “I gotta go do something.”

 


	11. and the two of us went up in smoke (d)

Terry watches helplessly as the Rosa and Jake race across the parking lot. He’d had a bad feeling about this day ever since he woke up to find his yogurt had expired the day before, but honestly he had no idea it was going to be _this_ bad.

They’re two minutes into this raid and already things are unravelling.

_Santiago’s inside the warehouse._

“Charles, get a message out to the tactical team, tell them to pull back,” Terry barks at Charles. Charles, who had been watching Jake’s retreating back desperately, quickly drops back into his seat and seizes the microphone. “I need Captain Pembroke on the line, _right now!_ ” Terry barks at the beat cops behind him. They begin scrambling, searching for a phone, and as Terry watches he feels a light prod at his shoulder.

“I promised I’d keep Gina updated,” Charles says, holding his cell phone up apologetically.

Terry winces. “Go ahead, but make it quick.”

Charles nods and scurries off, just as a phone is thrust into his hands. When Terry lifts it to his ear, he hears it ring once, twice, three times.

“What?” A disgustingly familiar voice on the other end of the line barks.

“Captain, it’s Sergeant Jeffords. We really need you to get down to this raid site right now.”

“I’m already on my way, dumbbell. I’ll be there in five minutes.”

“Perfect.” Terry ends the call quickly and shoves the phone back into the beat cop’s hand. “No one says a word to him about this botched raid, understand?” Terry says seriously. The beat cop nods. “I want his ass here when the FBI gets here.”

He turns away, his gaze fixated on the warehouse as activity picks up behind him once again. “C’mon, Santiago,” he mutters quietly.

* * *

Amy watches Doug and Vinny retreat toward the emergency exit from the corner of her eye with a certain level of calm acceptance. She’d had a feeling - an inkling in the back of her mind - from the moment she read that text: her time with the Fumeros is almost up.

She’s going to die at 8 o’clock in the evening on November 17th.

All in all, she’s pretty calm about everything. She did her job. She found the warehouse, and she got the information to the FBI. All that’s left now is for them to put the pieces together and to take care of whatever’s left over.

And they don’t need her to do that.

“Step one,” George says loudly as Doug and Vinny slip away. “We cut loose ends.”

She may be at peace with whatever her fate is, but that doesn’t stop her innards from turning to ice the moment George’s sinister glare lands on her.

“Melissa,” he says coldly, “won’t you join me here in the middle of the room?”

She glances at the shiny silver pistol in his right hand before taking a single, tentative step forward. She’s read of a thousand different marches toward death, some written in heart wrenching detail, but none of them come close to the real thing. Because there’s no way to put that anvil in her chest into words, no way to capture how hyper aware she is of every minute detail around her - the rustling, shifting footsteps, the sharp intakes of breath the steady drip of something leaking from somewhere back in the far corner - as she makes her way, resigned, to where George sits.

He lifts his hand when she’s three feet away from him, and she stops short. “Melissa,” he says, and a million spiders cascade down her spine. “You remember what happens to rats in this organization, don’t you?”

Her heartbeat sounds like a stampede in her ears as she nods, slowly and shakily.

She sees a muscle in his jaw twitch, sees the fingers around the butt of his pistol tighten, and she closes her eyes.

The sounds that follow make little sense.

There’s a bang like a metallic door being thrown open, followed immediately by a roar of voices shouting directives. Multiple gunshots fill the air, and something warm and wet sprays across her face and neck.

When she opens her eyes, George Fumero is slumped to his left in his seat, a single gunshot wound in the side of his head.

Amy has precisely two seconds to absorb it and the fact that there is now a literal swarm of people clad in NYPD riot gear pouring into the building, guns blazing, before she’s off like a rocket.

The shelves near the emergency exit provide some scant cover, but already Amy can tell that she won’t be able to stay here without some kind of defense mechanism. Bullets are bursting through the wooden crates on all sides, growing steadily closer in their seemingly random pattern. Amy can feel the noises of desperation coming from her throat: high-pitched and completely involuntary.

That is, until she sees a man (not in uniform, thankfully) hit the ground a few feet beyond an opening in the shelves, his semi-automatic skittering across the concrete toward her.

She darts out from the opening on instinct, her sole focus on the gun before her, but her path is cut off by someone who is also not in uniform. She has just enough time to look up and recognize Archie’s distinctive scowl before a fist collides with the side of her face, sending her crashing backwards into the shelves.

“Goddamn _bitch_!” He roars, but she’s ready, she’s been waiting for this day for the last seven months. She launches herself forward with an animalistic scream and a flash of genuine surprise shoots across his face before her hands close around his throat. Her momentum sends him crashing down backwards and she nearly loses her grip on impact, but she manages to keep her hold.

Her hair falls in a wild curtain over one shoulder as she throws all of her weight into her hands, cutting his windpipe off. For a moment, her vision is made up entirely of shades of red. All she can see are Vinny’s trembling fingers stained red with her blood and it spurs her on, pushes her forward, until Archies hands around her wrists loosen and slowly fall away.

She blinks and jerks back quickly. Archie remains motionless beneath her.

There’s a loud commotion immediately to her left; a small mob of cops and cartel is slowly winding toward her, each member swinging wildly at the other. Amy lurches forward and seizes the gun just as a rogue foot from the mob swings out toward her head, sending her crashing backwards back into the shelves once again. She scrambles backwards into the safer space and recognizes the movement of a human raising a gun to her left just a beat too late. She scrambles to her hands and knees, desperately grabbing at her gun, and points it -

\- directly at Rosa Diaz’s sweaty face.

She distantly hears the sound of her own name - _Amy_ , not Melissa - before a warm and solid mass she knows to be Jake slams into her. Her gun falls from her hands with a clatter as she desperately grabs onto him, revelling for a brief moment at how different the calm that overtakes her now is from the calm that had overtaken her just minutes earlier. He pulls back and cradles her head and brings her in for a searing kiss, one that would make her weak in the knees if she were actually on her feet, and she forgets about the hell breaking loose all around them and the fact that her eye is freshly throbbing and that it really should be much more confusing that Jake and Rosa are both here. All of that goes flying out the window because he’s here with her and everything always turns out okay when Jake’s around.

She can hear Rosa saying something behind Jake, but she’s too lost in the feel of his tongue sweeping through her mouth and his hands pulling her closer to him. It isn’t until Jake’s sent tipping forward suddenly that she finally gasps, the reality of their situation flooding back to her all at once.

Right. Escape first. Make out later.

Rosa’s escape plan is perfect, really, Amy thinks as she brings up the rear.

Except for one tiny flaw.

“Melissa!” A familiar voice cries from the other side of the emergency exit. She looks up and freezes - Vinny’s crouched behind a rogue shelf, arms up over his head, terror in his eyes.

It’s a split-second decision, but it’s one she knows she’ll never regret.

She bypasses the emergency exit and sprints to Vinny. As she drops to her knees beside him, she hears a clanging, definite bang of the emergency exit slamming shut; she glances back and spots a body leaned up against it.

“We’re trapped, we’re trapped,” Vinny whines hysterically.

“We’re not - we’re not trapped, calm down, it’s gonna be okay!” She’s peering up over the tops of the boxes blocking them from view. The warehouse floor is still in complete and utter chaos; there’s no way they’ll be able to cut across without being hit. The main entrance is still clogged with people in uniform, by which they won’t be able to pass without Rosa and Jake’s escort.

She glances up at the window over their heads and spots the rusted rungs of the fire escape ladder.

“The fire escape,” she says, pointing to the ladder. Vinny squints up in the direction she points. “We can climb down through the fire escape from the second floor, we just have to get up the staircase!”

* * *

Doug Judy is a master escape artist.

It’s yet another item on his long list of skills and accomplishments, one he wears with a particularly strong sense of pride, namely because it takes a serious amount of intelligence and quick thinking to be as good at escaping as he is.

Of course, not every situation is built for an easy escape. Some of them require hard work, some massively serious critical thinking skills.

On the night of November 17th, at precisely 8:22 PM, Doug Judy finds himself in such a situation.

First of all, hardly anyone leaves a decent-sized escape boat harbored in this bay. And the ones that do leave old, dingy boats that are impossible to hotwire. He’s been in and out of upwards of a dozen boats and has yet to find one that works. The gunfire dies down with each passing second. His clock is running out.

This has gotta be his divine punishment for all the horrific crimes he’s committed over the years, he thinks. After all of his foolish selfishness, it makes sense for the crime he gets caught in to be the crime he committed wholly for the benefit of another person.

Maybe if he gets caught, he’ll get to find out what happens to Amy after tonight. That wouldn’t be such a bad thing, all things considered.

Of course, as his fourteenth boat finally roars to life beneath him, he can also wait a while to find out about that.

The boat he’s jacking his high-tech and crazy; it looks more like the control board of a plane rather than the driver’s seat of a boat. He manages to get it in reverse and to pull it away from the docks, but as he reverses he finds himself facing the very warehouse he’d escaped from minutes earlier.

And as he looks, he spots a familiar figure clinging to the fire escape ladder way up near the roof.

“Vinny?” He mumbles to himself. He’s frozen, stock-still, staring up at Vinny’s form. There’s movement up near the top of the ladder, but the angle of the lights from the ground level cast everything beyond the wall into shadows. The silhouette moves to the right slightly just as Vinny appears to make a move to ascend the ladder, and Doug swallows. “Don’t do it, kid,” he whispers.

No sooner are the words out of his mouth than a gunshot suddenly rings through the air. This one is louder and clearer than the distant pops inside the building, but that’s not the most terrifying thing - that would be the body now falling from the roof of the warehouse.

Doug begins scrambling, hitting buttons blindly, as though pressing the right one will rewind the last few seconds. But instead he manages to turn a police-grade spotlight on just in time to completely illuminate the body hurtling toward the water, just as a disembodied voice screams from above his head.

* * *

 

The situation inside the warehouse has deteriorated dramatically in the time that has lapsed since Jake first sprinted out the emergency exit. Pools of blood spot the floor and motionless bodies are strewn about carelessly, and if Jake were in there looking for anyone else he might have to stop and retch.

But as it is, he’s in there for Amy. And all he can really afford right now are brief glances to ensure that he’s not leaping over _her._

He’s on the verge of yelling her name again when he suddenly spots her, a blur of color sprinting up the staircase in the back left corner of the room. She’s following someone else, a man who looks a few years younger than her from the distance Jake is currently at. She’s got a gun in her hands, at least.

He takes off after her, ducking and diving and narrowly avoiding being shot at least six times before finally stumbling to the bottom of the staircase. He tears up the stairs quickly, so singularly focused on catching up to her that he no longer hears the deafening sounds of the dying shootout below him.

She’s not on the second floor, he realizes quickly, and as he grabs at the railings for the third floor he realizes there are footsteps ascending the staircase below him. He doubles his speed (something he didn’t realize was possible) until he trips onto the third floor, sprawled out across the dusty floor, heaving for breath.

A heavy boot hooks beneath his hip, kicking up upright roughly, putting him nose-to-barrel with a shiny silver pistol.

“Well, well,” a familiar voice pants. Jake blinks, refocusing his eyes so that he can absorb the face of the man pointing the gun at him. “Long time no see, eh, Peralta?”

He’d recognize this man anywhere - he’s had the stupid mugshot taped to his computer for over a year now.

“Freddy Maliardi,” he breathes.

“Shoulda _known_ you’d be involved somehow,” Maliardi says roughly, “ain’t that fuckin’ typical? You get fucked by one nark, you get fucked by ‘em all.”

Jake’s chest is heaving. He can hear their footsteps on the roof above him now, creaking along the surface. Maliardi glances up.

“C’mon, get up.” He reaches down and seizes Jake by the neck of his uniform, yanking him up roughly to his feet. “Walk.”

Jake lifts his hands up on either side and begins walking, slowly, the barrel of Maliardi’s gun pressed against his spine. His heart thunders in his throat and he prays they’re too late by the time they get to the roof, that Amy will already be down the ladder and a safe distance away so that Maliardi will never, ever be able to touch her.

But, of course, this is _his_ life that he’s considering. He’s never been a particularly lucky kid, he learned that much the day his dad walked out on him.

She’s standing right at the edge of the roof, her grip tight on the edge of the fire escape ladder. She’s looking over the edge (which comes up to about her knees), her hair whipped back in a crazy swirl as the breeze whips in from the bay. Maliardi slings an arm around Jake’s neck and forces him down, his knees connecting with the hard surface of the roof so hard he feels it humming in his teeth. He presses the gun to Jake’s temple, and Jake stiffens.

“ _Nark_!” Maliardi screams. Amy whirls around and freezes, her entire body lurching forward at the sight before her. Jake clenches his jaw and does his best to tell her to stay still, to not do anything stupid, to not be an idiot. “What’d you think, you were just gonna rat us all out and get away scott-free?”

“I never thought that,” Amy calls. Her voice quivers. “Please, Freddy, your - your beef is with me -”

“Nah, nope, it’s with both of ya!” He tightens his arm around Jake’s throat and presses the barrel a bit harder against his temple. Amy edges to her right, her arms rising infinitesimally; almost as though she’s attempting to shield someone or something that only she can see. “See, this sunnovabitch ruined what I had goin’ with the Iannucci’s and then _you_ -” the gun leaves Jake’s temple and from his periphery he sees it pointed to Amy and Jake _swears_ his whole world stops until the gun is once again against his temple “- come paradin’ in claimin’ to _be_ an Iannucci and I knew - I _knew_ \- somethin’ wasn’t right.”

Amy shakes her head, brows drawn together in desperation. “Please, _please_ , don’t hurt him -”

“Don’t be an idiot!” Jake manages to choke around Maliardi’s chokehold.

“Listen to your boy, here,” he snarls, shaking Jake’s head a little for emphasis. “He knows who he’s dealin’ with here -”

Jake drives the palm of his hand up into Maliardi’s wrist, seizing it and twisting it up and around. Maliardi squeezes the trigger in surprise but Jake’s ready; he elbows backwards until he makes contact with Maliardi’s groin and then twists and lands a solid, heavy punch against Maliardi’s face as Maliardi doubles over in pain..

He hears the heavy sound of Maliardi hitting the ground, recognizes that Maliardi is now unconscious, but none of that matters.

Because Amy’s not on the roof anymore.

Jake lurches forward, his arms and legs numb, and when he hits the side of the warehouse he sees her falling. She’s twisting through the air, briefly illuminated by a spotlight that suddenly blares to life from somewhere out in the bay, her hair blown back gracefully, and he screams because she’s plummeting toward the water from four stories up and there’s only one reason she would have fallen.

She’s been shot.

“ _AMY!_ ”

* * *

Rosa’s definitely going to murder the Vulture with a thousand plastic spoons (that is to say, slowly and painfully) because she’s sprinting across the parking lot in the middle of the night toward a warehouse that very well could be the stage for Amy Santiago’s final act.

She’s going to kill him because she hasn’t seen Jake in several minutes and she knows that no matter what happens to him, he will never, _ever_ recover from this if Amy doesn’t make it out in one piece.

She’s going to kill him because she can see Doug Judy in a boat out in the bay, probably seconds away from speeding off into the night, never to be heard from again.

She’s going to kill him because she can smell blood and burning gunpowder, she can taste it in her mouth with every inhale.

She’s going to kill him because the gunfire has almost completely stopped now, except for one that cracks through the air like it’s been fired from outside the warehouse.

She’s going to kill him because of that gut-wrenching, blood-curdling scream that echoes from the roof of the building just a few seconds after the gunshot.

She’s going to kill him because there’s a body falling from the roof of the warehouse, and in the brief moment it’s illuminated in a blinding spotlight that suddenly flashes to life from Doug Judy’s boat, Rosa catches a shock of familiar raven hair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M SO SORRY


	12. stay here with you, 'til this dream is gone (a)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys. GUYS.
> 
> Your response to the last chapter was COMPLETELY OVERWHELMING. I'm just so in awe of you guys. You guys have no idea how much your responses have meant to me, seriously!! Thank you, thank you, from the bottom of my heart THANK YOU!!!
> 
> I'm SO SORRY I took so long getting this chapter written. I could bore you with my excuses but I won't, because IT'S DONE and it just HAPPENED to get done on the night we don't get a new episode (go figure!!) so. Hopefully you guys aren't disappointed.
> 
> I love you all SO MUCH!

For how illogical it is, Rosa could  _ swear  _ Amy falls in slow motion. There’s a certain amount of grace to it all - even as she plummets to the earth, there’s a gentleness to her movements, an elegance and poise Rosa can only achieve in ballet slippers. The way her body delicately twists and turns through open air somehow makes the whole thing that much more horrific to witness.

But the second Amy hits the water and promptly vanishes from sight, Rosa’s whole world comes roaring back into full-speed.

The wind is screaming in her ears (accompanied in perfect harmony by Jake, who is still screaming some fifty feet over her head) and her heartbeat thunders through her throat as she sprints down the side of the warehouse and down the dock, eyes never leaving the epicenter of the violent waves parting in a ripple effect in the water. Her mind is on autopilot, her sole focus on how crucial the next few moments are going to be, and she realizes a beat after she dives off the end of the dock that she’s still wearing her boots.

At least she remembered to rip her helmet off.

The water is dark and murky and damn near impossible to see through and the second she’s submerged, the assaulting sounds from above water are suddenly cut off. All she can really make out is a vague and hazy outline of her surroundings, lit by only the dimmest glow from the lights above the surface; she feels the ground before she sees it. Her chest begins burning after a few seconds of blindly feeling nothing but slippery rocks and the edges of her vision are beginning to darken and fade when she finally kicks off the ground and propels herself toward the surface.

She breaks through the water and gasps for air, filling her lungs to capacity twice, before diving back in. And in the time it takes her to inhale, she absorbs two important things: first, there’s a mass of people huddled at the edge of the same dock she’d dived off of earlier, which is now suddenly twenty feet away. And second, there’s a small boat headed toward her, on the opposite side of where the dock is.

Her vision hasn’t improved in the brief time her head was above water, but - like a beacon in the night - whoever is driving the boat suddenly turns a spotlight down toward the water. It cuts through the darkness in one solid beam, scanning quickly but steadily, and Rosa follows its’ progress closely while batting her swirling curls out of her line of sight.

It takes a minute, but the light makes a hard cut to the right and (for just the briefest second) illuminates one single, motionless hand, curled in unconsciousness and knocking lazily against a rock with the beat of the current. Rosa’s heart leaps into her throat - she recognizes the ring on the middle finger as the one that fell from Boyle’s butt cast last year.

Her lungs are burning again but this time Rosa can scarcely feel it; all of her energy, her mind and body and laser-sharp focus,  _ all of it _ is now focused on fighting through the darkness to get to where Amy lies.

Once again, Rosa feels her before she actually sees her, and if she were surrounded by oxygen she might actually cry out in relief. But as it is she merely pulls Amy up from the rocks and wraps an arm around her chest, hooking beneath her armpits, and kicks off as hard as she can from the bottom of the bay. It’s twice as difficult as it was before with Amy’s added weight but the surface is getting closer and Rosa will  _ not _ let it end like this.

The surface gives way to her thrashing limbs and she bursts forth with a strangled, involuntary shout, heaving for air. Distantly she hears the ambiguous fusion of voices from the dock to her right over the roar of a boat engine closing in to her left but Amy’s dead weight is dragging her back down and there’s water in her ears and her eyes. She kicks as hard as she can and swings her free arm around wildly, desperately searching for anything even remotely solid to grab onto, but she’s having to tilt her chin all the way up to keep from going under again which means that Amy is completely submerged and -

And then it hits her. Literally.

A rope seemingly falls from the heavens and whacks her right across the face and she grabs it immediately, her hold as tight as a vice. Any slack in the rope pulls taut instantly and she feels herself being pulled away from the dock, toward deeper waters. Suddenly hands are pulling Amy away from her and the metal rungs of an underwater ladder knock painfully against her shins. She hauls herself up into the boat, blinking water out of her eyes, and the moment she can see clearly she’s stunned completely motionless.

Doug Judy’s crouching beside Amy, ripping the sopping and tattered remains of her shirt open, hands flying quickly and efficiently over her torso. The moment her skin is exposed, Rosa’s gaze zeroes in on the dark, inch-wide hole several inches above her left hip. All of the oxygen molecules in her entire body evaporate as blood begins intermingling with the water dripping down Amy’s side.

“Diaz!” Distantly, she recognizes the sound of her own name being screamed at her, but she can’t stop staring, can’t stop the fact that her lungs suddenly feel like they’re in an air compressor and lit on fire because  _ Amy’s been shot _ . “ _ Diaz! _ ” She blinks. Judy’s staring up at her, eyes wide with fear, with pure unadulterated terror. “ _ She’s not breathing _ !”

And just like that, oxygen comes rushing back to her. She lurches forward immediately, dropping to her knees and skidding to a stop on Amy’s right side. “Find something to staunch the blood flow!” She barks. As Judy scrambles backwards, she quickly seeks out the center of Amy’s chest and starts steady chest compressions, keeping count in a whisper under her breath. Judy comes back with a towel he found folded beneath the benches on the front end of the boat. “Press hard, as hard as you can!” She says to the beat of her compressions.

“I don’t wanna hurt her -”

“Don’t worry about - she’s been  _ shot _ ! She’s hurt no matter what, do what I’m telling you or else she’s gonna die!” Rosa dives down toward Amy’s face without waiting for a response. She pinches Amy’s nose with one hand and pulls her chin down toward her chest with the other and blows into Amy’s mouth. Her cheeks don’t puff out, which offers some small relief - the air is reaching her lungs.

Rosa pulls back and waits for a beat. Amy remains motionless.

“ _ C’mon _ ,” Rosa growls, starting chest compressions again. Judy’s up on his knees to tilt more of his weight forward on the gunshot wound, but she can feel him shifting nervously as he watches her work. Anxiety begins to trickle down her spine after she gets through the second mouth-to-mouth and Amy’s still not responsive. “ _ Damn it _ , Santiago, don’t _ fuckin’ do this _ !” She snarls as she starts the third round of compressions. “I swear - to -  _ God _ \- I’m - gonna -  _ kill _ \- you - if - you - do - this - to - us!”

She goes on like that for a few more compressions - though it mostly deteriorates into vicious grunts and growls - before diving back in for mouth-to-mouth.

And it’s while she’s blowing a third exhale into Amy’s mouth that Amy suddenly lurches to life beneath her.

Rosa jerks back just in time to avoid it - Amy surges to her right and vomits water across the deck of the boat. Judy jerks his hands back in surprise, and as Rosa lurches forward to drive the heels of her hands into the towel, Amy releases a hoarse, guttural shout that echos off the warehouse wall.

“ _ Drive! _ ” Rosa screams at Judy.

* * *

“What the hell is goin’ on here?” The Vulture demands in a snarl, his dark eyes scanning the black SUVs pouring into the parking lot warily. “Who the hell are they?”

“They’re the FBI,” Terry snaps, “and they’re here to figure out why  _ we’re _ here raiding the Fumero’s base of operations.”

The Vulture’s head snaps toward Terry and every ounce of color drains from his face. “Who told you this is the Fumero’s base?” He asks quietly.

“You - you  _ knew _ this was the Fumeros?” Terry demands, no longer attempting to keep the accusation out of his voice. “You ordered us to  _ raid  _ \- this isn’t even  _ our case  _ anymore, you transferred it to Major Crimes -”

“Actually, as of two hours ago, this  _ is  _ our case.” He interrupts flippantly. “They transferred it back to us.”

“ _ Why _ ?”

“Wuntch has been up my ass for the last three weeks about getting our stupid arrest numbers up or whatever. So, I called in a favor. This case was ninety percent done anyways. We should be comin’ outta this with, like, thirty arrests.”

“Yeah, maybe we would’ve had that many if they hadn’t been armed!” The Vulture furrows his brow. “They were  _ armed _ , man, it’s been a shootout since the second we got in there!”

A look of vague concern crosses his face, but it’s gone a moment later. He squints across the parking lot and blatantly ignores Terry’s outraged expression.

“I can’t  _ believe _ you had Major Crimes transfer this case back to us, man!” Terry says, resisting the urge to cross his arms and stomp his feet the way Cagney had the night before when he told her she couldn’t play with Lacey in the princess tent until she ate her broccoli.

“No, actually, that request was denied.” A commanding voice behind them says loudly. They both turn to find Agent Larson storming toward them, her pantsuit jacket unbuttoned and flapping in the breeze.  It takes a moment to see past her terrifying demeanor, but once Terry’s able to, he realizes Captain Holt is hot on her heels. The Vulture, to his credit, does seem to quail for a moment; Larson stops just inches before him, her face set in a truly frightening scowl. “I don’t know what you were trying to pull here, Captain,” her lips curl around the word, as though it tastes of spoiled yogurt, “but I can assure you that you will be dealing with the consequences of this _asinine attempt_ at being even _remotely_ competent for the position you currently hold for a very, _very_ long time.”

The silence that follows is not unlike the silence following the moment after a ground-quaking crack of thunder; Terry knows his eyebrows are half-way up his forehead, and as he glances to his left toward the Vulture, he almost expects to see a singed pile of ash on the ground where he’d been standing. But of course, the Vulture is still on his feet - his face is flushed red and his eyes flash, and Terry realizes belatedly that it’s all in anger.

“Look, lady, I dunno who the -”

A gunshot cracks through the air before the Vulture can finish his sentence; it originates from somewhere behind them and is far louder than the muffled shots Terry heard inside the warehouse all night. Terry’s head immediately snaps toward it, eyes scanning the dark horizon quickly and efficiently. The Vulture’s still talking, jabbing his finger accusatorily at Larson, but Terry’s attention is now squarely focused on the warehouse behind him.

Mostly because of the horrifying scream that echoes across the distance just a few seconds later. His body recognizes the sound before his brain does, lurching forward to grab at the barrier. Everything feels very scattered and disconnected, only one thought pinging all around his brain:  _ Jake needs help _ .

From the corner of his eye, Terry sees Charles launch himself out of the controls seat, rip through the barrier, and take off across the parking lot, shouting  _ “I’m comin’ Jakey!” _ at the top of his lungs as he goes. Terry casts one last apologetic glance over his shoulder, which is met with a single, stiff nod from Captain Holt, before vaulting the barrier and taking off after Charles.

For all the anxiety and uncertainty he’s experienced over the last several months, this - running at full speed head-first into a potentially life-threateningly dangerous environment - feels startlingly normal. Terry finds his rhythm quickly, his feet slapping across the pavement in sync with his deep and even inhales and exhales and his mind slips into tactical mode. He overtakes Charles quickly but doesn’t fully pass him, choosing instead to stay just a few feet ahead of him so that he’ll have a few extra seconds to secure their surroundings before they’re both inside the warehouse.

As it turns out, it’s totally unnecessary; Jake comes barrelling out of the front doors just as Terry leaps up the curb. His face is flushed and his eyes are bright and unseeing and his anguish is palpable in the air surrounding them - but he’s not injured from what Terry can see.

“Peralta -” Terry starts, but Jake shoves past him just as Charles catches up, sprinting down toward the dock. “ _ Jake! _ ”

He doesn’t respond, either because he doesn’t hear Terry or because he’s too busy sprinting full-speed toward the water to form words. Terry has to seize him by the belt to keep him from diving in head-first. “ _ Let me go, let go _ !” He shouts desperately, straining against Terry’s hold with all his might. His feet are scrambling, scraping against the worn wood of the dock and mashing down on Terry’s toes. His arms swing wildly beside him, before him, even briefly behind him, trying to generate enough momentum to break free of Terry’s iron-clad grasp.

“Jake -” Jake grunts and twists, forcing Terry to yank him backwards and to pin his arms down by his sides. “ _ Jake _ ,  _ calm down! _ What the  _ hell  _ is going -”

“ _ Amy fell! _ She fell off the roof and she’s _ in the water  _ and -”

Terry’s gaze darts to the boat approaching the dock over Jake’s shoulder, and as he tilts his head around to get a better view, he spots a familiar head full of wet, dark curls break the surface for a moment before diving back down under water.

“Diaz is down there!” He interrupts. Jake’s mouth hangs open, his gaze frantic on the choppy water. “Diaz is gonna get her, you  _ have to calm down _ !”

Jake’s chest is heaving but he’s no longer straining to get free; still, as Terry tentatively loosens his hold on Jake, he’s at the very edge of the dock and leaning forward, as though the angle he has will afford him a better view of what’s happening beneath the surface. A blinding spotlight flashes to life aboard the boat before turning down toward the water, right around where Rosa surfaced seconds earlier. Terry squints at the huddled mass near the source of the spotlight, and realizes with a jolt that it’s being operated by Doug Judy.

“I don’t get it,” Charles starts, “Amy’s  _ such  _ a strong swimmer -” the end of his sentence is lost beneath a deafening gunshot from the shore behind them. Terry ducks instinctively, dragging Jake down with him, and the next few seconds come in flashes: Jake jerks forward. Charles rolls to the left. Terry tucks his head down, catching a limited upside-down glimpse of the shore through the space between his right elbow and his right hip. He catches sight of a rail-thin man with a vaguely familiar face currently twisted in fury, running toward them and brandishing a gun, before an explosion by his right ear deafens him.

There’s always a moment immediately following a gunshot in which Terry is completely, utterly disoriented. It’s as though the sound has jarred him down to his very soul, temporarily shocking it loose from his body, so that everything he sees is disconnected from reality. In this moment, in this never-ending space between heartbeats, his uneven gaze fixates on Jake. On the way his fingers curl a hair more tightly for the briefest moment around the butt of his gun, aimed at the shore. On the coalescing fog that gathers before his face as he releases a heavy, shaky exhale. On the way his eyelids flutter twice as the realization of what he’d just done seems to catch up to him.

Jake has shot this newcomer squarely in the forehead, and the man drops to the ground in a dull and final way. He does not move again.

By the time Terry has fully processed that Jake has just  _ killed a man _ , Jake’s attention is already raptly fixated out on the waters once again. He shifts his weight from foot to foot anxiously and cranes his neck once again, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he’d just ended a life. It’s kind of hard to hear over the blood rushing through his ears, but Terry’s pretty sure Jake’s whispering Amy’s name over and over again under his breath like a nervous tick.

“Peralta -  _ Jake _ , oh my -”

Footsteps begin pounding erratically down the dock behind them, and for a moment Terry’s fairly certain his heart is going to burst right in his chest. But when he spins on his heel, gun aimed and ready, he’s met by the sight of Captain Holt rushing toward him. Behind Holt is a kid Terry’s never seen before, but Holt appears utterly unaffected by his presence. The question is just about to roll off his tongue but Jake’s already leaning over the edge of the dock again and it’s too much, it’s really too much, the Academy has  _ truly _ let him down because he is in  _ no way  _ prepared to handle  _ this  _ level of crisis.

“I think she got shot,” Jake chokes, and no, _now_ Terry’s heart is going to explode. Charles gasps audibly, and Terry can _feel_ Holt stiffen to his right. “I think she got shot and - and that’s why she fell. She fell because she got shot and she lost her balance and -” he’s cut off by a hiccup that violently seizes in the center of his chest and he immediately slaps his hand over his mouth, his entire face crumbling in anguish. “It should’ve been me, he should’ve shot _me_ ,” his voice slips between his fingers, thick with unshed tears.

It’s hard to tell exactly how much time passes; moments bleed into each other, creating a seemingly endless space of nothingness, filled only by the sounds of the water slapping against the underside of the dock and the distant, muffled purr of Judy’s boat engine idling some thirty feet away. Terry can see Jake’s shoulders shuddering, as though the weight of a world without Amy Santiago is resting upon them, slowly and steadily crushing him. Terry reaches forward without thinking and grips Jake’s shoulder tightly; whether he’s trying to steady Jake or himself is beyond him.

“I’m sorry, son,” Holt says, and his voice is shattered glass and frozen ground and dreams that almost were.

There’s another heartbeat that feels like the final nail in the proverbial coffin that the last six months have been, and then -

A collective gasp passes through the group gathered at the edge of the dock as Rosa suddenly thrashes through the surface, dragging a body up with her. The spotlight on the boat spins erratically as Judy lurches toward the life line, and it flashes down on Rosa just long enough to illuminate Amy’s pale, unconscious face before the dead weight of her body causes Rosa to nearly sink back below the surface. Terry feels Jake blossom skyward beneath his hand at the sight of Amy’s face, rising up to the balls of his feet, and his grip on Jake’s shoulder quickly transitions from comforting and steadying to grounding and restraining, keeping him from tumbling forward into the water.

They watch with a certain level of helplessness as Judy drags Amy on board and Rosa hauls herself up the side ladder, scrambling toward Judy and Amy on her hands and knees. The boat rocks violently as Rosa appears to suddenly lurch forward after a brief pause, and then all he can make out are the tops of Rosa and Judy’s heads, bowed and bobbing off-beat with the rocking boat. Amy is completely hidden behind the side of the boat that blocks his view. Rosa’s head dips below the side for a long moment before appearing again, and his breath solidifies in his throat when he realizes she’s performing CPR.

“Come on,  _ come on _ …” Jake mutters, his hands clasped in trembling fists at his sides. They’re deathly silent as Rosa dives below the edge again, and when she appears again Terry swears he can hear her voice, razor sharp in anger, over the sounds of the waves. “Please please  _ please _ …”

Rosa’s head disappears again, and just as Terry thinks he’s about to pitch himself off the end of the dock to climb aboard himself, he sees Rosa’s head jerk back. At the same time, Judy recoils in the opposite direction. A half second later they hear a shout - broken and splintered and hoarse - cutting through the darkness and echoing off the warehouse wall.

In a normal situation, that sound might only deepen the fear twisting his gut into knots. But he knows that voice - he’s heard it harsh and distorted like that before. And, based on the sudden full-body sob that sends a tremor through Jake beneath Terry’s hand, he’s not the only one who recognizes it.

Amy Santiago is  _ alive. _

* * *

 

The roof of the warehouse is far windier than Vinny is expecting, but it only distracts him for a second. He can see the dark expanse of sea stretching on before him as he quickly approaches the edge of the roof, and as he grabs on to the rusted fire escape handles, he can taste the salt in the wind. Melissa’s right behind him, her hands unsteady against his back as he swings his leg over the side of the roof and onto the first rung of the ladder. For a moment he has a terrible vision of falling, of plummeting toward the water and being dragged all the way down to the bottom where slimy hands and the weight of his own impossible guilt keep him pinned to the ocean floor.

“Go, Vinny, go,” Melissa urges him in a whisper, and the vision is gone.

He makes it down far enough that the top of his head is hidden behind the side of the building when he hears it, a disembodied and inhuman screech from somewhere on the roof. He freezes, eyes trained on Melissa’s ramrod-straight back, now suddenly facing him. Every muscle in his body is burning just as every muscle in hers appears to be frozen in place; indecision is roaring like a wildfire through his mind - is he supposed to keep descending the ladder or is he supposed to get back on the roof?

He can hear Melissa talking, but he can’t hear the words - all he can surmise is that she’s pleading with someone. There’s a desperation to her tone that he simply isn’t used to and it is, by far, the most stressful thing he’s endured all night (and that’s really saying something, considering this is his first shootout with police and everything). She’s edged closer to the ladder, her arms rising fractionally; belatedly, he realizes it’s to cover him should he reappear over the edge of the building.

She’s protecting him. Because whoever is on the roof is clearly a threat. And that is all the convincing he needs.

He manages to ascend one whole rung before a deafening gunshot explodes from somewhere on the roof and then the most curious thing of all happens. He sees Melissa jerk back, stumble a step, and then her legs hit the edge and it’s like - it’s like the Slinky he used to play with on the apartment steps when he was a kid. She pitches backwards, falling shoulders-first, passing him by just inches away before hurtling toward the water.

He feels himself following her, reaching after her, as though by catching her outstretched hand he can yank her back to the moment before this nightmare started unfolding. He hears rapid footsteps approaching the edge of the roof and he shrinks back, curling in on himself, but it ends up not mattering.

Because the man who slams against the side of the roof has a very familiar long nose, very familiar curly hair, and wearing a very familiar cop uniform. He’s paler now than he was the last time Vinny saw him - all wrapped around Melissa in that alley near their apartments.

There’s a fraction of a second in which Vinny briefly considers launching himself forward off the ladder, at the alley cop’s throat, because there’s a gun in the cop’s holster and Vinny’s ears are still ringing - and then -

“ _ AMY! _ ”

His voice wells up from somewhere down in his ribs, spewing from his mouth the way he’d seen oil erupt from the ground in all those old Westerns his dad used to make him watch. It’s kind of hard to really see in the dim light, but the pain in this guy’s eyes - it’s the vision of a man watching his entire world being engulfed in flames. Vinny freezes, unable to tear his eyes away, even as he hears the heavy splash of a body hitting the water fifty feet below him.

The cop only stays there a fraction of a second longer before he rips away from the side of the roof, but even after he’s long gone, Vinny finds himself rooted to the side of the building.

_ “He’s a good dude. That’s all I’m gonna say.” _

Vinny’s hands are numb by the time he’s reached the bottom of the fire escape, but it hardly matters. The alley cop is already at the very edge of the dock and two more men are with him - one of them, a guy who kind of looks like Dwayne The Rock Johnson, appears to be holding him back, keeping him from diving in after Melissa.

Or, Amy. Whatever her actual name is.

_ God. _

Vinny’s feet hit solid ground and he takes one step toward the dock before a gunshot somewhere to his right sends him scrambling backwards. From the corner of his eye he can see the men at the end of the dock reacting - dropping to the ground like dead weights - but his gaze is mostly focused on the source of the gunshot. Freddy Maliardi is running full-speed toward the dock, pistol in hand, and suddenly the last few minutes make sense.

Of  _ course  _ the alley cop didn’t shoot Melissa.

Maliardi makes it another three steps toward the dock before another gunshot cracks through the air. Maliardi’s head whips backwards and he crumbles to the ground, instantly motionless. For a brief space of time, Vinny struggles to remember how to breathe. And in that space, he absorbs several things at once: a boat is approaching the dock; the second shot came from the alley cop, who’s staring at the shore, gun still raised; and there is another police officer in uniform standing almost even with Vinny, on the other side of Maliardi’s motionless body. He looks like Vinny’s middle school vice principal. And he’s _ looking at Vinny _ .

Oxygen floods Vinny’s lungs all at once. The vice principal cop has this arrestingly authoritative aura, one that makes his blood solidify in his veins. He lifts his chin a few degrees - his chest rises with an inhale of his own and in the low light, his numerous badges and medals seem to catch and gleam - and then, to Vinny’s amazement, the cop tilts his head toward the dock and raises his eyebrows.

An invitation.

Vinny takes off toward the dock, keenly aware of the fact that the vice principal cop is now running toward it as well. Their paths converge at the end of the dock and Vinny ends up falling behind a step when The Rock’s look-alike spins around wildly and aims his gun at them. He falters when he spots the vice principal cop, and then his brow furrows as his gaze flicks to Vinny. The Rock’s lips part, like he’s about to ask, but then the alley cop takes a step to the left and the board beneath his feet groans and The Rock seems to decide that it’s just not worth asking.

“I think she got shot.” The alley cop chokes. His voice is barely audible over the sounds of the bay, but his words pierce Vinny’s chest, rooting him to the spot. That other cop, the short one that looks like a minor character from some raunchy comedy he’d seen a few years previously, gasps dramatically. Vice principal cop and The Rock both stiffen. “I think she got shot and - and that’s why she fell. She fell because she got shot and she lost her balance and -” alley cop suddenly cuts short and slaps a hand over his mouth, like he’s trying to stuff down the words with the palm of his hand. “It should’ve been me, he should’ve shot  _ me _ ,” his voice is veiled beneath a thick layer of poorly-contained emotion, his words getting progressively more difficult to pick out over the sounds of the bay.

There’s a stretch of silence that follows, one that seems to drag on forever, in which Vinny goes perfectly numb. He sees alley cop’s shoulders rising and falling erratically, as if experiencing a personal earthquake. The Rock’s lookalike reaches out and grips one of alley cop’s shoulders firmly.

“I’m sorry, son.” The vice principal cop says.

It’s the tone of absolute defeat that brings Vinny hurtling back to his body. The events of the last twenty minutes - the hell that had been unleashed - comes crashing down in full force all at once. He sucks in a ragged breath that even he can't hear over the sounds of the bay.

He’s going to run. It’s his only option. He’s going to run as far away as he can from this dock, he’s going to run and run until he forgets all of it, forgets the Fumeros and the Iannucci’s and Doug and Melissa and his own name. He’s going to run until his heart is whole again.

One step back, one thick swallow, one last look at the bay.

Just in time to see a headful of dark, soaking-wet curls come tearing out of the water like all the sharks in those shark week ads he’s seen on TV. It’s violent and water goes flying everywhere and the spinning spotlight on the boat creating a strobe effect certainly doesn’t help, but it doesn’t matter: Vinny would recognize the second, lolling head bobbing along the surface anywhere.

He takes it from the dramatic gasp that rips through the group on the dock that they know the person dragging Melissa toward the boat. Alley cop is practically tipping into the water, up on his toes at the furthest corner of the dock, gaze hard and trained on the image of Doug pulling a limp and lifeless Melissa on deck. The other woman (he realizes now that it’s a woman) hauls herself up, too, quickly scrambling forward on her hands and knees toward Doug. The Rock’s lookalike shifts, straining to get a better view, and steps directly in front of Vinny in the process; Vinny glances helplessly at the vice principal cop, whose gaze flicks from the boat to the alley cop and back again.

“Come on,  _ come on _ …” Alley cop mutters. In the space between the bodies between them, Vinny can see his hands clenched tightly in fists at his sides. There’s a distant echo from across the water - a woman’s voice, sharp and commanding. “Please, please,  _ please _ …”

He’s on the verge of doing something - he isn’t sure what, either screaming or throwing something or... _ something _ \- when he hears it. He’d recognize that strangled shout of pain  _ anywhere _ , he’s heard it enough times over the last nine months sitting at her dining room table guiding a sewing needle through her skin:

Melissa Iannucci is  _ alive _ . 

God, he  _ really _ has to figure out what her real name is.

“ _ Jake _ ,” The Rock’s lookalike says sharply just as the boat engine roars out in the bay. Alley cop - Jake - ignores him, as if by straining forward as far as possible he can will the boat into getting to the dock faster. Jake’s entire body seems to be humming with energy, tilted precariously toward the boat at the furthest corner of the dock, and like a bloodhound locked on a scent he can’t quite get to he basically whines as Doug draws the boat closer to the dock. He’s shaking his right hand nervously down near his hip, close to the empty holster on his belt, fingers stretching and curling rhythmically.

As Doug gets the boat closer to the dock, the details of his face become clear. There’s a surreal amount of fear twisting his features into an unfamiliar expression; kind of like the look he had on his face right after Archie killed Frankie, but far more intense. His movements are jerky and choppy, as though his limbs aren’t quite cooperating as cohesively as they normally do. He draws the boat up about three feet away from the dock before swearing so loudly it echoes faintly off the warehouse wall; the gate to board the boat is on the far side, the side turned away from the dock.

It ends up not mattering. Jake finally shakes The Rock’s hand off of his shoulder and leaps off the edge of the dock toward the boat, nearly falling into the water in the process, before clambering up the side and actually falling on board. Vinny’s jostled to one side by the crowd around him shifting, trying to get closer, but he still has a clear view of Jake on his hands and knees; his desperation is clear even through the blood smeared across the side of his face.

Vinny’s heart stops. There’s  _ blood _ on Jake’s face. And he’s pretty certain that it isn’t Jake’s blood.

His eyes never leave Jake’s face, which is currently contorted in an odd combination of terror and relief. The other woman, the one whose lips are faintly blue and curls are partially dried in a frizzy frenzy of hair, has a determined snarl on her face. As Doug brings the boat up flush with the dock, the woman snaps something to Jake, who shakes his head sharply, like he’s trying to knock off a fly.

The moment the boat stops moving forward the comedy cop shoves through the others, launching himself forward over the edge and onto the boat. Vinny’s hot on his heels, hurling his body onto the boat and absorbing a flash of the scene before him - the blood-smeared deck, the blood-soaked towel, the head of familiar raven hair currently matted with a sickening cocktail of water and blood - before his feet slip directly out from beneath him. He hits the deck hard on his left side and then slides, like a baseball player sliding into home, straight toward the other edge of the boat.

He panics and splays his limbs, desperately scrambling to find something solid to grab onto before he shoots right through the bars and into the water. The rubber soles of his sneakers catch on a dry patch on the deck, bringing him to a screeching halt for a fraction of a second. But he’s on his feet again a moment later, just in time to catch sight of Melissa’s heaving chest around Jake’s shoulder. Her right arm is bent up toward her head, her fingers wrapped loosely around Jake’s wrist as he cards his fingers through the hair at her temple. Vinny can hear him talking, the hysteria easily identifiable even over all the commotion, but the words are lost to the wind.

His entire world narrows down to Melissa’s trembling fingers stroking unsteadily up the inside of Jake’s wrist.

The others from the dock are quickly boarding as well, stepping between Vinny and the scene unfolding in the midst of the deck, but before he can take a step to one side to get a better view he feels a hand seize the back of his shirt.

“Easy,” Doug hisses in his ear when he lurches forward in surprise. “Pull back. We gotta stay on the outskirts so they forget about us.”

“Melissa’s  _ hurt _ -”

“She  _ said  _ we’d have to run,” Doug interrupts, “and  _ this _ is our chance. Just stay back here and we can make it outta here in one piece.”

“But what about Melissa?” Vinny shoots back, his voice quiet but clearly ringing with horror.

Doug refuses to meet his gaze. He stares straight ahead determinedly, his jaw clenched and his grip on the back of Vinny’s shirt firm.

The next several moments pass in a flurry of activity unfolding before them. Four EMTs come running down the dock and Vinny watches helplessly The Rock stand and quickly wave them onboard. The boat groans and tilts beneath his feet and he stumbles to his left; the throng of bodies surrounding Melissa parts for a split second, and the image of blood smeared all over her torso burns into his retinas.

The EMTs have her strapped to a gurney in seconds and as they ease her over the gap between the boat and the dock, Jake clambers after her. He keeps pace at her side, gripping her limp hand, as the EMTs rush her down the dock toward dry land. The rest of the group, save the vice principal cop, follows after them in a fast-shuffling mob. 

As the vice principal cop carefully sidesteps the blood-stained towel haphazardly discarded on the deck, Vinny takes a step forward. Toward the dock, toward the flashing red-and-blue lights, toward Jake and Melissa and everyone else. But Doug’s grip on his shirt stays firm, and the vice principal cop shoots them a pointed look before climbing up the side and jogging away.

“We gotta go, man,” Doug says apologetically as Vinny watches the vice principal cop’s back retreat.

Vinny plants himself at the back of the boat, his unwavering gaze fixated on the flashing lights until they’re out of the bay and speeding down the coast.

 


	13. stay here with you, 'til this dream is gone (b)

There’s a young man in his mid-twenties standing at the base of the fire escape ladder. Ray’s heart is thundering, his chest heaving from his mad sprint across the parking lot, and he can’t tear his eyes away from this stranger. He stares at Ray through wide eyes, eyes that reflect every iota of terror that has ever existed in any niche of time, and takes one shuddering breath. His deer-in-the-headlights gaze flicks down to the motionless body that marks the halfway point between them for half a second before he meets Ray’s gaze once more.

Call it instinct, or intuition, or years of finely-tuned detective skills, but something about this kid (and he really is just a  _ kid _ ) has Ray automatically classifying him as  _ ‘non-threatening.’ _ The rhythmic flexing of his fingers has Ray classifying him as  _ ‘friend.’ _

Ray lifts his eyebrows a degree and nods once toward the dock, and the kid takes off toward it at a sprint.

Ray scans the body as he passes ( _bullet wound to the head, not breathing_ ), a spark of deja-vu igniting in his chest, but his focus remains on the end of the dock where Terry and Boyle and Peralta are all gathered. He manages to pass the kid from the fire escape even though his knees are screaming abuse, the overwhelming stiffness radiating up to his hips. His squad seems to be fixated on something in the water, but even as Terry whirls around at the sound of footsteps approaching them from behind, Ray’s attention remains on Peralta’s back.

“I think she got shot,” Peralta chokes just as Ray manages to catch his breath, and the oxygen solidifies in his lungs. The tone of utter defeat is new and almost foreign in Peralta’s voice, but Ray’s heard it there once before - in the moments after learning Santiago was to become romantically linked to an abusive mobster. “I think she got shot and - and that’s why she fell. She fell because she got shot and she lost her balance and -” he hiccups and slaps a hand over his mouth, as though his fingers can catch the anguish bubbling up through the fissures in his chest and fling it out into the waters. “It should’ve been me, he should’ve shot  _ me _ ,” he moans, and Ray feels the shards of his own heart lodge in his throat.

Ray can feel Boyle shaking beside him; if he’s crying, the sounds of it are covered beneath the bay. Time is marked by the steady slap of waves against the dock’s supporting beams and the slow, even sweep of the spotlight, manned by Judy, on the boat rocking gently out in the bay. Desperation to ask just what the hell is happening is nearly choking him, but he remains silent, as silent as the hand Terry places on Peralta’s shoulder.

It’s too late. It’s too late. It’s too late.

“I’m sorry, son,” he says as softly as he can, as if by whispering the words, he can cushion the blow. But it’s far too little far too late, because he’s this man’s captain but he couldn’t stop Wuntch or the FBI or Dozerman or Pembroke from destroying everything. He couldn’t save Peralta from losing his partner, from being demoted, from losing his best friend. He couldn’t stop any of it, he couldn’t even save  _ himself _ .

And now Santiago is gone and Peralta is crumbling before him and Ray isn’t sure if he’ll ever be able to forgive himself for it.

But then Diaz comes ripping through the surface, all swinging arms and clawing hands as she drags Santiago’s limp body up from the reluctant waters, and the sight is enough to ward off the existential crisis instantaneously. Terry’s grip grows firmer on Peralta’s shoulder, pulling him away from the edge he’d suddenly teetered dangerously toward, and they watch with bated breath as Judy throws Diaz a lifeline and drags both her and Santiago to safety.

Judy hauls Santiago up first, and as Diaz pulls herself up the ladder after them Judy’s movements become choppier. Diaz pauses at the end of the boat, apparently catching her breath - no, she’s frozen on her hands and knees, staring straight ahead at Judy. Ray sees Judy snap something at Diaz, his arms pulling apart quickly in a ripping motion, and Diaz suddenly lurches forward. The side of the boat blocks the source of the action, but after watching their movements - the repeated downward push and brief disappearance below the edge from Diaz, the kneeling, slightly bowed position from Judy - Ray comes to one conclusion.

Santiago isn’t breathing.

“Come on,  _ come on _ …” Peralta mutters, and from the corner of his eye Ray notes that his hands are clenched in trembling fists at his sides. Diaz vanishes to administer mouth-to-mouth for a second time, and when she reappears again she snaps something, probably at Judy.  “Please please  _ please _ …”

Diaz has just disappeared for the third round of mouth-to-mouth, sending the desperation from the little throng at the end of the dock sky-rocketing to impossible heights, when she suddenly appears to jerk back. Judy rears back simultaneously, and not even a moment later the air is split open by a hoarse, splintered shout that echoes off the warehouse wall.

A tremor works its’ way through Peralta’s entire body like an instant aftershock at the sound, and Ray chokes out a small laugh of relief that is carried away by the wind.

_ She’s alive _ .

“ _ Jake _ ,” Terry warns sharply over the revving engine out in the bay. Peralta does not react in the slightest, his laser-sharp focus fixated on the boat headed their way. He leans forward as far as he can, his entire body seemingly humming in impatience - actually, no, Peralta is  _ literally whining _ , low and fearful, deep in his chest, as Judy draws the boat closer. He shakes his right hand impulsively, stretching his fingers, as if itching to grab the gun no longer sitting in the empty holster.

Judy draws the boat up close enough for Ray to absorb the details of his face - his sweat-shining brow, his clenched jaw, his vice-like grip around the steering wheel. He’s so busy studying these details that he very nearly jumps out of his own skin at Judy suddenly swearing loudly. It isn’t until Peralta launches himself across the three-foot gap between the edge of the dock and the edge of the boat that Ray understands why - the loading gate for the boat is on the far side, the side facing away from the dock.

Peralta clambers up the side but his foot ends up hooked on the edge, sending him sprawling clumsily across the dock. Ray spreads his arms as Terry and Boyle and the fire escape kid shuffle behind him, desperate to get a view of what’s happening. Peralta springs up again, his face smeared with blood, and Ray’s heart stops at the sight.

Boyle is the next one to leap across the shrinking distance and he manages to land on his feet with only a slight stumble. The fire escape kid is next; his feet slip directly out from beneath him and he very nearly slides through the bars on the opposite end of the boat before he catches himself. Ray realizes with a sickening twist of the gut that he’d slipped in a combination of blood and water, spreading rapidly across the deck.

He waits at the furthest edge of the dock with Terry until the edge of the boat is flush with the edge of the dock before boarding. His knees are still aching from sprinting across the parking lot, so he does briefly grab Terry’s outstretched hand for support, but he manages to make it to the slick deck without falling. But the sight that greets him as he straightens up is enough to make him weak at the knees.

Santiago’s shirt has been ripped open and her torso is painted red with blood. Diaz has a ruby-stained towel pressed against Santiago’s side, her own teeth chattering as frigid water drips from the ends of her soaking curls. Santiago’s eyes are wide and glazed with panic and disorientation and agony, blinking rapidly up at Peralta’s face hovering above hers. Peralta’s fingers tremble violently as they card through her hair near her temple; her hand is wrapped loosely around his wrist.

Touching. Always touching.

Terry’s screaming into his radio for medics and Boyle is speaking to Diaz so rapidly and at such a high pitch that his voice is nearly unheard by human ears and Peralta’s voice is low and desperate as he speaks to Santiago and Ray is paralyzed. Because his shoes are stained with blood and Doug Judy is staring straight at him and his team is falling apart before his very eyes.

No. Not today. Not again.

Determination washes through him as he meets Judy’s gaze. He nods once, imperceptible to those surrounding them, and a look of understanding flashes across Judy’s face.

He shuffles Boyle away from Santiago as four EMTs converge on the boat, subtly shifting between where Judy and the fire escape kid are standing and the rest of the group. Peralta keeps a firm, desperate grip on Santiago’s hand as they lift the gurney up and over the side of the boat, and Boyle and Terry help Diaz off the boat once their path is clear. Ray waits until they’re halfway down the dock before shooting one last warning look at Judy and hauling himself up the side of the boat.

The engine roars somewhere behind him the moment his feet touch dry land, but he doesn’t look back; his uneven gaze remains on the shuffling mob he knows to be Terry, Diaz, and Boyle, some thirty yards ahead of him. Beyond them he can see the fast-moving group made up of the EMTs and Jake, and the cluster of flashing lights beyond them that is both their origin and destination.

He manages to overtake Terry and the others within a few seconds, but by the time he catches up with the EMTs, they’re already loading Santiago into the back of an ambulance. A fifth EMT is standing between the ambulance and a wildly-gesticulating Peralta, an arm out to stop him from mowing the EMTs down. Peralta’s half-yelling some garbled nonsense over the EMT’s careful spiel about family or spouses being the only ones allowed to ride in the back, and even though Ray’s chest is heaving, he steps between them quickly.

He will  _ not _ let them take this from Peralta, too.

“Ma’am,” he interrupts, and he recognizes the dangerous booming quality in his voice. It’s all the anger and frustration he’s been harboring for the last several months, poorly restrained judging by the suddenly pale, wide-eyed look on the EMT’s face. “I understand the standard procedures regarding uninjured civilians accompanying the injured in an ambulance.” He grips Peralta’s shoulder, channeling all the strength and mental fortitude he has into his touch. “I can assure that there has never been, nor will there  _ ever  _ be, a husband who loves his wife with more singularly intense devotion than  _ this  _ man loves  _ that  _ woman.” He says, pointing to the back of the ambulance where Amy is already half-loaded in.

From the corner of his eye, he can see Peralta’s blood-shot gaze dart to his face, but he remains focused on the EMT, who swallows thickly in response. Her lips open and then close. She blinks.

“Go,” Ray mutters quietly, nudging Peralta’s shoulder forward.

Peralta immediately flings himself into the back of the ambulance. Ray catches one last glimpse of him on his knees at Santiago’s side, gingerly scooping her dangling hand up in both of his own, before the back doors swing shut and the ambulance peels out of the parking lot to a symphony of screaming sirens.

He waits until the ambulance is just a blurred smattering of lights in the distance before whirling around on his heel and scanning the scene for the rest of the squad. Clusters of officers and agents dot the landscape between where he stands and the warehouse, and individuals run back and forth from cluster to cluster, trying to secure the scene; in all of this, his attention catches on the hulking back of his former Sergeant several yards away.

He’s standing two feet from the back of another ambulance, and as Ray approaches he catches sight of the top of Diaz’s head over Terry’s shoulder, framed in the open back door. She’s buried beneath two thick blankets but is still trembling, her eyes closed and face buried up to the nose in the soft grey folds. Boyle is sitting beside her, lending his body heat by leaning into Diaz’s side and chattering rapidly into the phone pressed against his face. His voice has lowered in octave, but it still rings with a clear hysteria as he quickly rattles off what happened; that, coupled with instinct, tells him that Gina is on the other end of the line.

Terry’s half-turned toward him, mouth open to say something, but before the words can form Ray’s phone begins ringing shrilly in his pocket. He furrows his brow as he digs it out, jolted, having forgotten that people outside of his squad existed until this moment.

_ Madeline Wuntch _ scrolls across his home screen, and he grimaces.

“Raymond, why the  _ hell _ am I getting calls about you being at an active crime scene?” She snaps the moment he answers the call. He grits his teeth, quickly retreating from the ambulance toward his car, parked haphazardly some yards away near the entrance of the parking lot. “Have you completely lost your mind? Or are you so intent on having me ruin your entire career that you decided to do the job for me tonight?”

“Madeline -”

“Your presence compromised the officers’ judgement and it is likely going to cost the city _thousands of dollars_ in damages and lawsuits - I can’t believe your ego is _so unfathomably huge_ that you would _willingly risk_ _botching_ such a _huge operation_ , Major Crimes is going to _have your head_ for this -”

“This was  _ not my fault! _ ” He snaps. Ray slams the driver’s side door shut over the sounds of Madeline’s scandalized gasp. “This operation was botched  _ entirely _ by my replacement. My presence was requested by a desperate member of my former squad, well after the botching was set in motion.” Madeline is silent as he twists the keys in the ignition and the engine roars to life beneath him. “My presence would not have been necessary were it not for Pembroke ordering this  _ disaster _ of a raid! How  _ dare _ you accuse me of putting  _ my squad _ in unnecessary danger when the replacement  _ you assigned  _ is solely responsible!”

He rips the gear shift to Drive with one hand and peels away from the curb, accelerating a bit more than wholly necessary, teeth bared and ready for Madeline’s biting retort. But all he hears on the other end is silence, broken after a moment by a quiet gasp. “Pembroke ordered the raid?” She asks, and her voice is clouded and strange in his ears.

“Yes.” He snaps back, unsure of what it all means, unsure of how to handle Madeline with anything other than bitter anger and spite.

“And he -” there’s a sound on the other end of the line, like something heavy hitting the ground, and she curses. “- he ordered the  _ Nine-Nine _ to conduct the raid?”

“Yes.” Ray snaps again, but his voice falters.

“I had - I had no idea.” She says, her voice shaking with tremors. He scoffs as he speeds through an intersection. “Was anyone injured?”

“Has the weight of whatever curse you’ve cast upon my former precinct not crushed my detectives enough, Madeline? Must you have  _ every excruciating detail _ -”

“Raymond,  _ was anyone from the Nine-Nine injured _ ?”

There’s a beat of silence that follows, a beat wherein Ray registers that this is the first genuine emotion he’s heard in Madeline’s voice since the beginning of their partnership all those years ago. He releases a slow breath and swallows the lump in his throat. “Detective Santiago was shot -”

She releases a noise he’s never heard come from her before, an involuntary sound somewhere between a grunt and a moan, and then the line is full of the sounds of chaos. He hears keys jingling and items falling from shelves and Madeline breathing heavily as she presumably rushes through her apartment toward the door. “What hospital?” She demands, sharp and commanding.

“Brooklyn Methodist.” Ray mutters. He can see the neon sign for the hospital shining through the darkness up ahead. He doesn’t tear his gaze away from it, even when the phone beeps in his ear, signalling the abrupt end of the phone call.

The emergency room waiting room is brightly lit beneath a series of humming fluorescent lights, washing out the dull and muted blue color in the plastic chairs set up in six rows spanning from the entrance to the back wall. An attending nurse sits framed in the check-in window to Ray’s left, and a familiar huddled figure sits in the right-most corner of the room, but otherwise the room is empty and completely silent.

Peralta leans heavily against the wall to his left, his gaze transfixed on the dull glow emanating from the phone on his lap. He does not look up as Ray approaches, but he does flinch just a little bit as Ray sits down beside him. He shifts his leg, but not before Ray gets a look at the image pulled up on his phone - a selfie of him and Santiago, in which Santiago’s chin is resting on Peralta’s shoulder, and they’re both smiling at the camera.

Ray clears his throat quietly, the sound absurdly grating in his ears in the relative silence surrounding them. Peralta winces, and then they lapse into silence once again. Minutes pass, ticking by quietly on the clock mounted the wall above the check-in window to their right. Peralta shifts again, apparently no longer caring if Ray can see the selfie or not. He zooms in slightly, so that their faces fill the frame, and stares.

“My dad bought me my first camera when I was seven.” Peralta says suddenly. It comes out quiet and choked, almost strangled. “Seven. I took so many pictures of the stupid ground, or my shoes, or some stupid bug I found on a tree somewhere, and he’d get so mad at me for wasting film. ‘ _ This isn’t a toy, Jake _ .’” His eyes voice drops an octave in a grotesque caricature of his father, but his eyes never leave the screen. “I mean I guess I get it on some level, but like - it’s like, what was he expecting? I was  _ seven _ , y’know? How the hell was I supposed to know I was supposed to be taking pictures of him?”

Ray winces.

“He used to tell me I took bad pictures. But really, I take pictures of things that matter to me. Of  _ people _ that matter to me. That’s why there are three undeveloped rolls of film just - just  _ full _ of my ma. Gina’s in there, too, and Nana, but it’s mostly just ma. I wanted to remember their faces in case they...in case they left. Everyone - um,” Peralta clears his throat, his voice suddenly a hoarse whisper shattering over the broken ground between them. “Everyone always leaves. You ever notice that?”

Ray furrows his brow, staring down at a spot on the tile near his left shoe.

“Everyone leaves. S’weird. Everyone’s done it. Diaz. Gina. Charles. My dad. Everyone. Except Amy.” Ray glances at Peralta; he’s still staring down at his phone, his thumb stroking along the edge of the screen. “Amy doesn’t leave. Except when she has to, but...but that doesn’t count. Like when my ma went out of town when I was a kid and I...I had to stay with Gina and her mom. That wasn’t ma’s fault. She had to do what she had to do and she always came back.” He shakes his head. “She doesn’t leave unless she  _ has  _ to.”

He’s not sure if Peralta is reliving the last seven months or if he's picturing a Santiago-less future, but the guilt rising up like acid in his throat keeps him from clarifying.  _ He _ left. He left when Peralta - when the  _ whole squad _ \- needed him most. “She is truly remarkable.” He says carefully. From the corner of his eye, he can see Peralta nod vigorously. “Kevin and I have a niece who - who reminds me quite a bit of her.” He glances up in time to catch a muscle in Peralta’s jaw twitch. “Incredibly compassionate and yet, so  _ deeply  _ entrenched in what is inherently good and righteous in this world that...by comparison...all other worldviews seem impossible to fathom.”

Peralta’s right leg begins jiggling, and over his bouncing thigh Ray can see his grip around his phone has tightened to the point of his knuckles going white.

Ray takes a breath, steels himself, and says, “Peralta - Jake - I’m, I’m sorry.”

Peralta turns his head a few degrees, sidelong gaze bloodshot and slightly glassy, but Ray just can’t bring himself to meet his gaze. “What?”

“I’m sorry,” Ray repeats. He stares at a spot on the far wall. “What you and Detective Santiago have had to go through over the last few months - what the entire squad has had to go through - it’s unimaginable. And I should have been there. I - I should have been able to stop it. But I wasn't, and I couldn’t, and...now we’re here.”

Here, in the emergency room waiting room, Santiago’s blood staining his shoes and Peralta’s entire body. Peralta shifts, his hand reaching out to grip the armrest between them, and her dried blood is caked beneath his nails.

“It’s not your fault, Captain,” he says quietly. It’s as though he’s speaking from the bottom of the ocean, shipwrecked and near-forgotten beneath the tossing waves above. “It wasn’t...I mean, I don’t blame you. And...and I know she doesn’t, either. None of us do. You did everything you could. We know that. She knows...and I know...who the root of all of this is. It’s not your fault.”

The weight of his guilt still crushes down on him, but for the first time in a long time, Ray feels like he can inhale. He reaches blindly and squeezes Peralta’s knee in a wordless thanks.

“We really miss you at the Nine-Nine,” Peralta says thickly a moment later. Tears spring up in Ray’s eyes instantly. “Um... _ I _ ...really miss you. At the Nine-Nine.”

And it’s this - not the loss of his precinct, not the suffocating isolation, not the blood-stained boat deck - it’s the quiet admission from the man he’d once classified as his biggest problem that _ he’d been missed  _ that  _ finally _ brings Ray to tears. He turns his face away quickly and swipes his right hand beneath his eyes before turning and meeting Jake’s gaze. “And I miss you, too. At the Nine-Nine.”

The ghost of a grin flashes across Jake’s face, but it’s gone before it makes any significant imprint. “They took her into surgery,” he says softly, in a way that might have been nonchalant if not for the tension rippling through his arms and legs. Ray grimaces. The waiting room doors open quietly, giving way to Terry, Boyle, and Diaz, but Jake does not seem to notice. “They said - she wasn’t stable in the ambulance. They were giving her a blood transfusion before we got here. Did you know her blood type is A-positive? A-plus.” He snorts, tears suddenly spilling down his face, and then leans down until his head lands against Ray’s shoulder. “They gave her a-plus blood and she’s in surgery and I want her to come back.”

Ray watches Terry heard Boyle and Diaz to the mouth of their row. He shuffles Diaz, still swaddled in the ambulance blankets, back into an empty chair just as the swinging doors separating the waiting room from the rest of the ER give way to two wide-eyed nurses. Boyle’s desperate gaze burns a hole through Jake's forehead as the two nurses fuss over Diaz. Terry's staring, reaching to pull Boyle away while simultaneously trying to catch Ray’s eye, but Ray hardly pays any of it any mind. His whole world has narrowed down to Jake and warm weight of his head, the soft brush of his curls against Ray’s neck. His muscles burn to reach forward and hug Jake, to shelter him from the reality they’re on the cusp of facing, but reality is crashing through the front doors again in the form of a spitting-mad Keith Pembroke and no hug is going to be strong enough to shield Jake from  _ that _ .

Pembroke scans the room, zeroing in on Jake just as Jake’s head springs up from Ray’s shoulder. “ _ You _ ,” Pembroke growls, pointing an accusatory finger at Jake. Jake stands and lumbers forward, brushing past Terry and Charles, his jaw and fists clenched. “You just can’t follow a fuckin’ order,  _ can  _ you, you Ritalin junky -”

Pembroke’s next words never quite make it to open air, because at that exact moment, Jake’s fist connects sharply with the side of his nose. Pembroke collapses to the floor immediately, blood spurting from between his fingers clutched to his face. Diaz is on her feet, blankets forgotten on the floor behind her as she quickly elbows through her two attending nurses. She yanks Jake backwards but Jake is rigid and immobile, glaring down at Pembroke with an earth-splitting fury. His chest heaves and Ray finds himself frozen in shock; until now he didn’t even know Jake was  _ capable  _ of such unadulterated rage.

“Jesus  _ Christ _ , Jake -” Diaz chokes, her hands gripping his upper arms fiercely.

“This is  _ his fault, _ ” Jake says, his voice a low and raging hurricane, words spitting through clenched teeth and bone-white lips. Diaz lurches forward, her arms clamping down around his arms to pin them to his sides. She yanks again and his locked knees finally give, sending him shuddering back one step. The forced movement seems to break through his haze of anger; he begins to struggle, and Diaz’s jaw locks in determination. “Let  _ go _ , Diaz,” Jake snarls, “it’s  _ his fault - _ ”

Terry’s kneeling beside Pembroke, arms outstretched to help him up, but Pembroke bats him away and scrambles to his feet. Blood is pouring down his face in a slow, dripping waterfall. “You just hit a superior officer!” He crows nasally, delicately pinching the crooked bridge of his nose. “You  _ asshole _ !”

Diaz pauses just as Jake lunges forward violently, rage briefly contorting her face, but her grip is still tight enough to keep him in place. “Somebody needs to get him out of here or else I’m gonna hit him so hard he  _ won’t get back up again _ !” Jake shouts, his voice strained and cracking as it fills the empty waiting room. The doors slide open and a stream of suited FBI agents begin trickling in, Agent Larson at their helm, but neither Jake nor Pembroke appear to notice. 

“ _ Jake _ -” Diaz starts, suddenly more desperate in her attempt to pin his arms at his sides; her sidelong gaze is glued to Larson’s face, frozen in shock.

“I’m  _ serious, Diaz, get him out of here _ -”

“That’s it,  _ you’re fired! _ ”

A deathly silence descends on the waiting room, every person in the room going still at once. Boyle gasps sharply, the only sound audible over the quiet hum of the lights above their heads. Ray wants to stand, wants to eject himself between Jake and Pembroke and maybe take a few swings of his own, but he’s rooted to the chair. His blood runs cold and his lungs turn to stone; the only source of movement in the room is Jake’s heaving chest.

Until the doors slide open and Madeline Wuntch comes sweeping in. Ray tightens his grip on his armrests so fiercely the plastic nearly splinters beneath his fingers; her gaze is icy and petrifying even with her disheveled hair and her silken pajamas, and for the first time in nearly thirty years, it's trained on someone other than him. “Hate to be the one to tell you this,  _ Keith _ ,” she says cooly, a humorless smile curling her thin lips as she draws up toward him in a slow meandering trot, “but disgraced police captains under investigation by Internal Affairs actually  _ can’t _ fire officers.”

Ray feels himself gaping at her, and from the distant corner of his eye, Terry and Boyle’s jaws have dropped as well.

“You bumbling idiot.” She says quietly, and Ray’s heart skips a beat. He’s only ever been on the receiving end of this tone; to see it leveled at anyone else is as devastating as he imagines witnessing an atom bomb detonating would be. “Did you  _ really believe _ that  _ this _ was going to save your ass?” She takes a slow step forward, and Diaz and Jake shuffle back, as though subconsciously trying to escape the blast zone. “Even if this idiotic parade, this  _ ridiculous ode  _ to your  _ enormous ego _ was a marginal success, did you  _ honestly think _ that it would be enough to pull the numbers out of the flaming garbage pile  _ you drove them to _ ?”

Ray sees Pembroke swallow thickly.

“You truly must think so highly of yourself to believe that after serving for  _ two decades _ as an NYPD detective, I wouldn’t notice those blueprints on your screen when I visited this morning, that I wouldn’t dig around and find  _ scores _ of encrypted emails between you and your brainless Major Crimes lackeys, that I wouldn’t work out that this Captainship has been nothing more than an elaborate opportunity for you to be an unbelievably  _ juvenile bully. _ ”

“You said - you said the precinct was mismanaged -” Pembroke tries.

“ _ I said they were managed by an egomaniac. _ ” She snarls, and Pembroke recoils. “Of course, that was  _ before  _ I saw them under  _ your  _ management. At least I had an equal and worthy opponent in Raymond Holt. At least that precinct didn’t have  _ nearly _ as many botched cases or such an abysmal arrest record under Raymond Holt’s leadership,” she spits, but there's an undeniable note of pride in her voice. A strange and completely foreign surge of affection rushes through Ray’s veins.

Pembroke narrows his eyes dangerously.“Yeah? That’s not what all your emails say.” He jabs a finger at her. “You can’t touch me, Wuntch. ‘Cause for all the shit you’ve got on me, I’ve got just as much on you. And if I’m goin’ down, you’re goin’ down with me.”

Wuntch lifts her chin a degree, before her gaze darts to the right. She glances at Diaz and Jake, at Terry and Boyle, and finally, at Ray. She holds his gaze for a beat longer than the others, something shifting and swirling in the recesses of her eyes, before she clenches her jaw and glares at Pembroke.

“I expect your resignation on my desk first thing in the morning.” She says icily.

Pembroke takes a teetering step back, as though the weight of her words physically crashed into him. “You’re gonna regret this, you bitch.” He breathes. He shoots one last glare at Jake, his face beet red, before shoving his way through the FBI agents crowding the door and disappearing into the night.

Diaz’s grip around Jake’s torso loosens the moment the doors slide shut behind him. “That works, too.” He mutters as he steps away and shakes his arms out.

“Jeffords.” Madeline barks sharply. Terry jumps and scurries forward, lurching to a stop three feet before her and saluting. It’s a ridiculous sight, really; Madeline with her hands on her pajama-clad hips, tapping her foot impatiently up at a hulking 6’4” man practically trembling with intimidation beneath his elastic suspenders. “You’ll be acting captain until we can figure something else out.” She says flippantly.

“Yes, ma’am.” Terry says, eyes locked on a spot a foot over her head.

Ray feels himself rising to his feet, his brain disconnected from the body moving toward Wuntch. She seems to falter for the first time since entering upon turning to find him coming toward her, but she holds her ground, even as he draws up inches from her.

“Raymond.” She says, with only the faintest echo of her usual antagonizing tone.

“Madeline.” He answers with a slow nod.

“I...I’m...sorry.” She says. Her eyes flick down to a point over his shoulder; he recognizes that she’s glancing at the squad still huddled awkwardly behind him, before she steadily meets his gaze once again. “My pride and my desperation to outdo you blinded my judgement and...I put innocent lives at stake because of it.” She glances down at the floor, kicking her slippered foot out a little aimlessly. “My behavior was unacceptable. Pembroke isn’t the only one who tarnished the reputation of the NYPD.”

He expects a rush of adrenaline through his system, for his own personal symphony to rise through the tiles playing the victory march of his own composure - this is what he has been waiting for for  _ years  _ now, after all - but all he feels is a blanket sense of calm settling over his buzzing mind. “Madeline,” he says quietly, “I have been waiting a very,  _ very  _ long time to hear you say that.”

She purses her lips and casts her gaze defeatedly back down toward their feet.

“But I...was not innocent in this, either.” He says. She peers up at him uncertainly through her lashes. “I antagonized you at every possible opportunity and...did not even attempt to diffuse the situation in any way, shape, or form.” She nods slowly, a slight smile curling her lips. “I, too, am...sorry.”

“Perhaps...it would be prudent if...we established some sort of truce.”

“A truce between two formidable equals sounds like an excellent plan.”

She nods curtly, and then extends her hand. He takes it in a firm grasp, grinning when her fingers tighten just as firmly as they did all those years ago when he first met her in their old bullpen, and she grins back, big and bold, as they shake on it.

“Chief Wuntch?” Larson calls from the doorway.

Ray paces backwards three steps, watching Madeline hurry across the waiting room to duck her head in quiet conversation with Larson, before turning and slowly pacing back toward the squad on their side of the room, Terry at his side. “Proud of you, Captain.” Terry says with a tight smile once Diaz and Boyle bracket them in a misshapen circle. “We know that wasn’t easy.”

“It was easier by far than the last seven months have been.” Ray mutters, but he claps Terry on the shoulder anyways. Boyle chortles a little hysterically and Diaz smiles tightly, and Jake - slumped in his chair, looking like a boxer at the end of his third round in the ring - laughs. It’s thinner than it used to be, a little less joyful, but it's his. And it's like a spark hope in Ray's chest.

“Amy Santiago?” A new voice calls from the ER entrance.

The entire room converges in an instant, the Nine-Nine elbowing anyone shuffling too close to Jake out of the way. The doctor’s eyes are wide and a bit apprehensive as he takes in the mob suddenly surrounding him, and as he lifts the clipboard, it shakes in his hands ever-so-slightly. “Um...okay. She’s going to be okay.” Jake’s head falls back as a long sigh ripples through the group, his eyes closed and brow creased in relief. “We’re expecting a full recovery. Just want to get that out of the way first thing.” The doctor smiles tightly up at the group before dropping back down to the clipboard. “So, the, uh, the bullet did not pass all the way through due to the angle of entry, but, luckily, it only hit soft tissue - we were able to get in and extract the bullet within the hour, which is just, it’s pretty unheard of. No serious internal damage done. Now, we  _ did  _ find evidence of blunt force trauma to the back of her head consistent with her hitting her head on something -”

“She fell off a roof into a pretty shallow bay.” Diaz interjects in her customary monotone.

The doctor blinks, and then nods slowly. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s probably what did it, then.” He makes a quick note on the chart. “It’s resulted in a grade 2 concussion which - that’s pretty lucky, again, considering she fell off a roof.

“We’ve just moved her from post-op to a recovery room, but the anesthesia from the surgery is still working through her system, so she's still unconscious and she’ll likely stay that way for any length of time between several hours and several days, depending on a few different factors, like how much sleep she was getting on average leading up to the event, what her general health condition was, things of that nature.”

Jake’s head twitches to the right, and Diaz’s gaze snaps toward him. Something in her eyes tells Ray it’s probably going to be later rather than sooner.

“Once we get her all set up in recovery, I’ll send a nurse down to take visitors up to her, two at a time. Again, she’s unconscious, but we really don’t want to risk overwhelming her. So hang tight for a few minutes, and we’ll get you guys up there to see her.”

Jake stumbles backwards, falling back against Diaz’s steadying hands, a look of exhausted, giddy relief turning his sallow face into an achingly familiar grin. Diaz steers him back toward the chairs muttering quietly in his ear as Boyle hops excitedly along beside them, but before Terry and Ray can follow, Terry’s stopped by a hand on his arm.

“Captain Jeffords.” Larson says.

Terry shoots Ray a guilty look before clearing his throat. “Yes ma’am?”

“Due to the sensitive nature of this case, we really cannot allow Detective Santiago to have any contact with anyone from her personal life until after she’s been debriefed.”

Outrage wells up in Ray’s throat, hot and putrefying like acid, but before it can spill from his lips, Terry interjects. “With all due respect, agent,” he starts firmly, “my squad has been waiting for  _ months _ -”

“Captain, Captain, please,” Larson interrupts, waving her hands between them. “I meant her  _ family, _ her  _ friends, _ people from her personal life. Your squad has become unfortunately familiar with this case over the last few months,” she arches a knowing eyebrow, and Terry shifts his weight nervously. “We can make an exception for members of your squad - and certain officers from your precinct -” her gaze flicks to Jake, to his blood-stained beat uniform “- to visit her before she’s been debriefed, but anyone else -”

“Got it.” Terry says. He’s grimacing, the prospect of lying to Santiago’s family apparently not an inviting one, determination roars like a wildfire in his eyes. “We’ll just...we’ll tell them that she’s still undercover.”

“I appreciate your discretion, Captain.” She reaches her hand, and Terry shakes it. “I know the last few months have been incredibly difficult for you and your precinct. The FBI thanks you for your service.”

She shoots Ray a pointed look before spinning on her heel and marching away, leading the herd of FBI agents that had preceded her out of the building. “That lady is terrifying.” Terry mutters once she's out of earshot.

Before Ray can so much as grunt in agreement, the entrance to the ER opens once more, revealing a smiling ER nurse. “You folks here to see Amy Santiago?” She asks, her voice bubbly and light and just a little bit grating against their ears.

Boyle and Diaz move forward, Diaz snarling down at the nurse’s head (turned toward Boyle) as they disappear through the doorway, and Terry and Ray move wordlessly to sit at Jake’s sides. Jake’s leg is jiggling again, his phone out in his lap, but there’s a spark of life in his eyes that Ray hasn’t seen in months.

That plus the fact that the selfie is still pulled up on Jake’s screen draws the first legitimate smile on Ray’s face in months.

* * *

The waiting room is as empty and silent as it was when Jake first came in. It’s calmer now, though, somehow peaceful and relaxing compared to how isolating and terrifying it was initially. His joints are coming undone, slowly, melting peacefully beneath the buzzing fluorescents above him, and Jake has zoomed in on Amy’s face in the selfie. To the creases in his flannel where the delicate line of her chin dug in, to the soft light of Charles’ desk lamp reflected in her eyes, to the fine creases around the corners of her lips where her well-worn smile folds her skin. To the matching arches of her dark brows, the soft brown curls protruding from his head frozen against her temple, to her own raven locks tumbling down his chest off-screen.

She’s real, she exists, and she’s going to be okay.

He closes his eyes and tilts his head back against the wall behind him.

Amy’s going to be okay.

And she’s going to come back to a world where the Vulture isn’t her captain, where Rosa nearly drowned to save her, where she knows exactly how much she’s loved and cared for because he’s going to spend every single day for the rest of his life reminding her, so long as she’ll have him.

Rosa and Charles and Terry have already come and gone, shooting him small, knowing smiles on their way toward the door. None of them have tried to stop and talk to him, and he’s a little surprised at how grateful he is for it.

Or not. This is a private thing for all of them, and they all deserve the space to react on their own before they can hope to come together as a cohesive unit again.

Not a unit anymore, he reminds himself. Outlier. Change. Demotion.  _ Different _ .

But it’s okay, because Amy’s okay. And if Amy’s okay, he can figure everything else out later.

His head snaps up at the sound of the ER entrance opening, Holt walking a few steps ahead of that annoying super-happy nurse. Holt’s been radiating a supernatural peace since the moment he shook hands with Wuntch; Jake isn’t sure if it’s creepy or not that it hasn’t worn off yet.

Jake rises to his feet, his knees shaking, his toes numb, his palms clammy. This is it. He’s going to see Amy, and he doesn’t ever have to leave again. He’s going to see Amy and she won’t have to run away, they won’t have to hide. He’s going to see Amy and he’ll get to say her name and hold her hand and  _ no one _ will get to tell him to let go.

Except her, obviously.

He takes two steps forward, two faltering steps, before Holt stops him with a hand to his chest. “Before you go in there, I just wanted you to know - I meant what I said earlier.”

Jake furrows his brow. “About what?”

“Before you got in the ambulance.” He says, and Jake tries to sift through the memories clouded with terror and desperation. There’s something there - a foggy image of the ambulance, of an overzealous EMT standing between him and Amy, a steady hand on his shoulder. “Perhaps my use of the... _ L-word _ was...premature. But I’ve known many married couples whose years-old relationships are utterly devoid of the obvious care and devotion you have displayed toward Detective Santiago over the twenty-two months I spent as your Commanding Officer.” Holt says earnestly. Soft lights glow inside Jake’s chest, welling up his throat and sitting behind his eyes. “ _ No one _ will look after her better than you will. I’d stake my entire career on it.”

Jake launches forward without thinking, flinging his arms around Holt’s neck and squeezing as tightly as he can; it suddenly hits him that this is the second time he's hugged Holt, the first being over a year ago in the Iannucci surveillance van. It takes a moment, a long pause, but after a beat Holt hugs him back just as fiercely. He flattens his hand and pats Jake’s back a few times, and when Jake pulls away, he swears Holt’s eyes are glassy.

Holt takes a few steps back, clears his throat, and jerks his head back toward the door where the nurse stands patiently waiting. “Go on, son.” Holt says gruffly.

The nurse walks him down several long, twisting hallways, chattering all the way, but Jake can scarcely hear her. His eyes dart from door to door, his heart rate climbing with each passing moment, desperately wishing he could shove past the nurse and sprint directly to Amy’s side.

Patience, he hears Amy say testily.

“Here we go, room three-fifteen!” The nurse trills. Jake shuffles past her, his body numb, his gaze fixated on the two lumps beneath the blanket at the foot of the bed - all that he can see from the doorway. If the nurse says anything else, it’s lost to the buzz in his brain.

Amy’s even more pale than she was in the back of the ambulance - whether it’s because they wiped the blood from her skin or not is beyond his comprehension. Her right arm is lost beneath a tangle of thin tubes and wires, and a thick tube parts her lips and disappears down her throat, sending a steady stream of air down into her lungs. A pulse monitor keeps time in the corner of the room while a bag of saline solution and a bag of blood drip off-beat beside her. Jake releases a shuddering exhale and turns his head away, because it’s too much. She looks so  _ small _ beneath all of that, so small and pale and fragile and - and,  _ God _ , it’s not fair -

But it’s over, a voice that sounds suspiciously like his mother’s says in the back of his head. It’s over.

It’s over, and there’s an empty chair at her left side, right beside her hand loosely curled against the blankets.

He sits down in the seat heavily, taking her hand and gently squeezing it between both of his upon registering just how cold her fingers are. His fingers are still stained with her blood, he’s only just now realizing, but it doesn’t matter right now. Because her hands are cold and she hates being cold and he hates whoever let her sit here, alone and freezing in this hospital room.

“I’m not goin’ anywhere,” he whispers, ducking his head and kissing her knuckles. “I’ll be here when you wake up and I’ll be the one to take you home and - and everything’s okay now. Y’know? Because you’re here and...and they’re gone. They’re gone.”

They’re gone. The mission is over. Really, truly over. All that’s left now is debriefing, recovering, moving on.

Finding a new normal.

“You’re my normal,” he mumbles, his head resting against the mattress. He peeks up at her face through his lashes; her eyes are closed, her chest rising and falling rhythmically, the pulse monitor marking a steady tempo behind him. It occurs to him that he might be a little delirious, but he keeps talking. “You’re my - you. You’re Fart Monster. You’re Santiago. You’re  _ Amy. _ And I  _ missed  _ you.”

She doesn’t answer. Footsteps click by in the hallway outside her door, but the bubble - their bubble - remains unbroken.

“I missed you,” he repeats in a whisper, “and I’m so,  _ so sorry _ .”

He’s not even really sure what he’s apologizing for, but the moment the words leave his lips he feels a steady swell of emotions expand inside of him. It rises up slowly from the empty stretch beneath his stomach - the low, quiet, shuddering release of joy and elation and exhaustion and relief that comes with being near her again, muffled into her blankets with a quick turn of his head. And like a floodgate obliterated, the last seven months pour out of him, soaked up in the bedsheets and Amy’s soft, cold skin.


	14. been wandering all night (a)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: this chapter does contain talk of implied sexual assault. Please read at your own risk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello naughty children it's murder time
> 
> no but in reality i'm so hype to share this chapter with you guys it's been!! too long!! since my last update!! sorry!!
> 
> anyways here u go

Karen Peralta is wearing Amy Santiago’s dress blues.

They’re freshly pressed and starched so thickly that they practically stood all on their own when Rosa pulled them off the hangers in Amy’s closet the night before (or so Rosa says - although, honestly, Karen wouldn’t be surprised). There’s a respectable collection of buttons and bars attached to the jacket’s left breast that reflect the erratic and faint flicker of the fluorescent light above the hospital bed where the officer in question is currently laying. The collar, despite being undone two buttons and pulled apart repeatedly, is stiff to the point of asphyxiation; of course, it doesn’t help that Karen has to angle her head forward and slightly to the right to get the best view of Amy’s extended arm.

Or, more specifically, on the delicate azalea vine she’s currently painting on Amy’s extended arm.

So far she has one big blossom painted over the back of Amy’s hand giving way to a thin green vine that winds about halfway up her forearm, with a few smaller blossoms in between. It’s slow going - skin is so vastly different from canvas - but so far, Karen’s fairly pleased with her progress. And she was right: the vine only enhances the ethereal light she’d imagined glowing in Amy’s veins upon first entering the room.

(The same light glowing in her son’s arm, extending up to his shoulder from the hand that was clenched tightly around Amy’s not too long ago.)

The door is closed and has been for some time now, but she can hear a deep voice belonging to an officer whose name she will never know occasionally responding to the radio or speaking to a passing nurse from where he sits guarding the door out in the hallway. It’s fairly quiet and she’s safe in her borrowed disguise - they’re so weirdly adamant about who is allowed to see Amy right now - but she still has to remind herself not to hum too loudly while she paints. The less attention drawn to her, the better, as Rosa repeatedly reminded her on the drive in.

Rosa took Jake home five hours ago, and Karen hasn’t heard anything from either one of them since. Which is good, really, considering Jake hasn’t had a proper meal in three days, or slept longer than an hour at a time in as much time. As a human being who was once in love, she can’t really say that she blames him. But as his mother -

“Jacob.” She’d said, low and firm, the moment after Rosa secured the hospital room door.

His eyes were as big and wide as they used to get after she’d catch him up late watching television all those years ago. She saw his adam’s apple bob as he swallowed thickly, saw the twitch of his fingers tightening around Amy’s hand - much the same as they once did around the television remote, a sign of his combined reluctance and possession - and it took every single modicum of intense concentration to choke down the desire to whirl around and tell Rosa to shove off (which probably wouldn’t have gone over well, considering it was  _ Rosa _ who called her in the first place, so worried about Jake not taking care of himself that she’d resorted to calling  _ his mother _ to tattle).

“Ma,” his voice was an airy whisper, hardly audible over the steady beep of Amy’s pulse monitor across the bed from him, “are those - is that Amy’s uniform?”

A brief flash of self-consciousness shot through her, but as she glanced down she realized that the silver nameplate attached to the breast was catching the light at just the right angle that SANTIAGO stood out like a spotlight. “As a matter of fact, it is.” She’d said with a concise nod.

“I had to get her through security somehow,” Rosa had grunted somewhere behind her, and Karen could swear her voice was laced at the furthest edges with an apology.

He’d blinked a little dazedly in response, his gaze darting between the two women before him, and it was right about then that Karen noticed the string of light travelling up and down his and Amy’s arms for the first time.

“M’not leaving.” He’d said in mumbled defiance.

Rosa had heaved a sigh, one heavy with the implications that this wasn’t the first time she’d had this argument with him. “Jake -”

“Not ‘til she wakes up. Not ‘til she’s awake.”

“It’s been  _ three days _ , man -”

“I promised her I would be here when she wakes up.” He’d snapped with surprising conviction. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, Diaz, and Ma, I love you, but I’m  _ not  _ leaving Amy.  _ Nothing  _ you say or do is gonna change my mind.”

“What are you so afraid of? We all know  _ you’re  _ the first person she’s gonna ask for, it’s not like you  _ have  _ to be here when she wakes up -”

“I’m not gonna let her wake up  _ alone _ !” He’d barked, and the light between him and Amy was a roaring fire. Rosa’s shoulders slumped with the motion of Jake running his free hand through his hair. “She’s been alone for  _ months _ now, I can’t - I can’t let her think, for even a  _ second _ , that she’s still alone. Not after everything she’s been through.”

“Honey,” Karen had said softly. He’d practically flinched as he turned his face away, glaring down at Amy blindly. She could swear that she could see tears in his eyes; his fingertips were bone white against Amy’s hand. “Sweetheart, she  _ won’t  _ be alone. That’s why I’m here.”

He was still frowning when he looked back up, his brow furrowed in confusion. “I’m taking you back to - to  _ my  _ place,” Rosa interjected, “and your mom is staying here with Amy.”

“That way, if she wakes up while you’re gone, she won’t be alone.” 

“But -”

“Jake. Listen to me.” Karen had approached the bed slowly, tenuously, waiting for him to shrink away or to tell her to leave, but it was Jake - he’d merely blinked up at her through too-wide eyes that fluttered closed when she gently ran her fingers through his messy hair. “I won’t leave her side, not for any reason. Not even for a second,” she’d said seriously.

His gaze had flitted back to Amy, the pad of his thumb rubbing lightly over that band of light where it crossed the back of her hand. “You have to  _ swear to me _ that you’ll call me the  _ second _ she wakes up.” He said quietly.

“I will make that promise, but in return I’m going to ask you to do several things for me. Unless she wakes up, you  _ can not _ return to this hospital without getting at  _ least  _ eight hours of sleep, a shower, and two actual,  _ decent  _ meals: one before you sleep and one after. I will call you the moment she wakes up, even if it’s before you’ve left the building, but you have to promise me that you’re going to take care of yourself in the meantime.”

He’d looked up at her tiredly, eyelids already drooping. “Promise.” He murmured.

Rosa cleared her throat and looked away pointedly when Jake stood and leaned over the bed to kiss Amy’s forehead, but Karen couldn’t quite tear her gaze from the sight. And then he’d stopped to hug  _ her _ , limbs already heavy and warm with the promise of sleep on the near horizon, and then he’d shuffled out behind Rosa and the door clicked shut behind him.

Leaving her alone with Amy, whose arm still glowed from her son’s touch. She’d taken the chair Jake vacated and sat back slowly, studying the profile of the woman asleep in the bed before her. She’s met Amy before, of course, up at the precinct. She’s always been impressed with Amy, always had a bit of a soft spot for her, long before Jake even started showing signs of developing romantic feelings for her. Amy was always  _ vibrant _ and  _ joyful _ and  _ present _ , quite the opposite of the way she looks now: broken, lifeless, small. Aside from that imaginary strand of light illuminated somewhere in the tangle of her veins, Amy is far too still and far too pale for Karen to ever be comfortable with.

Which, of course, left Karen with only one option: paint. And she’s spent the better part of the last five hours doing just that.

All things considered, it’s coming along quite nicely. Amy’s skin proves to be just firm enough that the paint doesn’t smear, which makes the thin vines that much more realistic. Karen’s only fractionally aware of the fact that the tip of her tongue has emerged near the corner of her mouth in the midst of her concentration; she eases the paint bottle back down on the bedside table to get a better angle at the little leaf she’s just started up near the pit of Amy’s elbow.

The muscles in Amy’s forearm twitch and then clench beneath Karen’s fingers, and when Karen’s head whips up, she finds a pair of wide, bewildered brown eyes staring back at her.

“Amy!” Karen gasps. The paintbrush slips from her hand and lands with a disjointed clatter somewhere beneath Amy’s bed. “Oh my goodness, I’m - you’re awake!”

Amy blinks twice, a faint crease appearing between her brows, throat working sluggishly as she apparently struggles to swallow.

“Are you in any pain? I’ll call the nurse, sweetheart, just -”

“Are those -” her voice is a hoarse, gritty whisper as it cuts across Karen’s rambling.

“You need water. Here, let me -” Karen reaches across to grab the remote lying forgotten on the mattress beside Amy and presses the button to elevate Amy’s torso. Amy winces right as the bed is at a forty-five degree angle, so Karen leaves it there, carefully replacing the remote and seizing the glass of water Jake left behind on the bedside table. She directs the bobbing straw toward Amy’s chapped lips, and Amy takes several gulps, eyes closing briefly in what Karen can only imagine is intense relief.

Eventually the straw slips from Amy’s lips before she eases her head back into the pillow and her eyes flutter open again. She squints down at Karen’s shirt. “Mrs. Peralta, are you wearing my dress blues?” She tries again.

Her voice still isn’t whole - it’s really almost painful to listen to - but Karen flushes all the same. Her hands rise automatically to lay lightly over the bars pinned to the breast pocket, fingers drumming against them nervously. “Yes. They are. Rosa said they wouldn’t let me past security unless I looked like a cop, and we’re about the same size, so...” Karen explains as apologetically as she can.

She recognizes belatedly that Amy had called her by name - a sign her memory wasn’t lost, which was apparently something they were all worried about. A little wave of relief surges through her veins.

Amy blinks again, and if Karen had X-Ray vision she’s pretty sure she would see the gears in Amy’s mind slowly lurching back to life. “Oh,” she says, as if she’s supposed to understand, as if she’s afraid of asking questions about something so oddly out of place. As it is, she can see the sudden shift in Amy’s eyes - the quick pulse between bewilderment and fear. Karen shifts uncomfortably and attempts to steel herself. “Um...Mrs. Peralta, is...is Jake here?”

Karen deflates. It wasn’t the question she was expecting right away; she’s fairly certain if  _ she  _ was the one waking up in a hospital bed, she’d ask what happened first. Her breath hitches as her brain catches up to what she’s just heard - Rosa was right after all, Jake  _ is  _ the first person Amy asked for. Karen closes her eyes briefly, and behind her eyelids she pictures that one unsettling afternoon when he showed up shivering and soaked to the bone on her doorstep. It’s surreal to remember that the one who drew such an emotional breakdown out of him is now lying two feet away from where Karen sits.

Amy’s still staring at her, mounting tension evident in her facial expression, and Karen feels some distant part of her brain relax. She supposes it must come with the territory of being a mother - the insurmountable protectiveness she feels for her son, the deep-seated desire to guard his heart from any and all rejection. But there’s honestly in Amy’s eyes, a naked kind of desperation that burns bright in the still-sleep-dazed gaze studying Karen’s face, that communicates volumes about how this woman feels about Jake.

“Mrs. Peralta?” Amy’s voice breaks through the daydream; Karen blinks, and Amy appears to be on the verge of a mental breakdown.

“Karen, hon, call me Karen. And no, Jake’s not here,” Karen says quickly. Amy’s face goes oddly slack - it’s almost as if she’s relieved Jake isn’t here. “I sent him home a few hours ago to eat and shower and sleep. But he should be back soon.”

“So he’s - he’s okay?” Amy rasps.

Understanding washes through Karen all at once. “Oh, no, sweetheart, he’s not  _ hurt _ or anything like that. He’s just worried sick about you, is all.”

Amy quickly turns her face up toward the ceiling, nodding rapidly, and a moment later tears begin spilling out of the corners of her eyes. “Good,” she whispers, and Karen feels her own heart shatter. “Am I the only one who got hurt?”

Karen fits her hand alongside Amy’s, wrapping her fingers around the younger woman’s palm and squeezing as gently and reassuringly as she can. “That’s what they’ve told me,” she says, and Amy nods again. “They’ve also told me that you are very lucky to be alive.”

It takes her a few minutes to get her breathing back under control, but eventually Amy turns her bloodshot gaze back to Karen’s face. “I don’t...I don’t know how much they’ve told you,” she starts slowly.

“Oh, honey, I don’t know a single thing about what you were doing or who you were with or even where you were. Jake told me a few weeks ago that it was  _ very _ dangerous, and Rosa told me a little bit about what happened that night, but she specifically told me that it would only be enough to help you put the pieces together when you woke up. You can go ahead and ask me any questions you have, and I’ll do my best to answer them.”

Amy visibly swallows and nods again, and then inhales deeply, eyes closed. Karen waits, trying to resist the urge to swipe the pad of her thumb across the back of Amy’s hand in a comforting gesture; it would smear the paint.

“What - what happened to me?” Amy asks in a strangled whisper.

Karen hesitates for only a moment. “What do you remember?”

Amy’s maintaining eye-contact, but suddenly her gaze is a thousand miles away. Karen waits patiently while the gears begin churning. “I was...we were on the roof,” she murmurs. Karen nods - Rosa mentioned that. “I was helping - um,” Amy pauses and swallows, eyes closing briefly. “I was helping someone get out and - and he was on the fire escape and then - and then someone came out of the exit. And Jake was there. Oh my God, the guy, he was trying to  _ hurt  _ Jake -”

Karen has to work very hard to remember how to breathe evenly. It’s not as though she hasn’t ever considered the type of risk involved in her son’s profession - quite the contrary, in fact. She’s lost many nights of sleep spiralling into an abyss of hypotheticals. But to hear it confirmed - to know that her one and only son had been threatened just a matter of days ago - it’s enough to make Karen’s stomach churn.

“Are you  _ sure  _ Jake’s alright?” Amy’s strangled question cuts through Karen’s reverie. Karen blinks as she nods, and behind her closed eyelids she pictures Jake the way he was not five hours ago.

“Sweetheart, the only discomfort he’s in right now is self-inflicted. I  _ promise. _ ”

“Okay,” Amy whispers. “Okay. All I can remember is the guy, and Jake, and - and the roof. I can’t remember anything else after that.”

Karen nods slowly. “Like I said, I don’t have the full story. Rosa only told me enough to help you.” Amy inhales deeply, her gaze hardening in preparation. “According to Rosa, you...you were shot, and the momentum of that actually...knocked you backwards, off the roof.” Amy’s expressive brows arch upward in graceful disbelief. “You landed in the bay and they  _ think _ you hit your head on a rock under water. You were knocked totally unconscious, and because of that, you nearly drowned on top of everything else. Rosa ended up diving in and a boat pulled you both out and she gave you mouth-to-mouth in the boat.”

“I thought that was a dream,” Amy mumbles faintly. “I - I remember being cold - felt like the ocean in my lungs - and Jake, Jake was there -”

“I think Rosa mentioned the whole squad being on the boat with you before the ambulance guys took you away,” Karen offers.

“How long have I been in the hospital?” Amy asks after a brief moment of silence.

“Three days.”

Her shock is palpable in her bulging eyes and tensed muscles. She winces - the instinctive move probably wasn’t forgiving on her tender abdomen. “Three  _ days _ ?” She repeats, voice thin.

“You had quite a bit of recovery to do,” Karen says gently. She reaches up on instinct and brushes Amy’s hair away from her forehead, tutting upon feeling her feverish skin. “And, might I add, you still have quite a ways go to.”

Amy makes a quiet noise, a little huff, that brings a smile to Karen’s face.

“I know your team is excited to see you again,” Karen says once she’s sure Amy won’t hear the smile in her voice. “But more than anything, they want you to get better.”

“Jake hasn’t been sleeping because of this, has he?” Amy mutters, and Karen knows from the determined glare Amy’s shooting toward the ceiling that she already knows the answer.

“No, he hasn’t.” Karen answers with a shrug. “That’s why I’m here. He only agreed to let Rosa take him home if I stayed with you. I told him he had to sleep for at least eight hours, take a shower, and eat two decent meals before he came back, and I promised I would call him the second you woke -  _ oh _ !” Karen dives toward her purse lying forgotten on the floor immediately. Her phone is lost in the folds of leather but Karen manages to find it after only a minute of digging. “Oh, he’s just gonna  _ kill  _ me…” she mutters as she scrolls through her contacts.

It only takes a moment for the call to connect, but in that brief space of time, Amy’s expression has swirled into a storming mixture of apprehension and anticipation. Karen watches, transfixed, as the emotions flicker across Amy’s face. The phone rings and she supposes Amy must be able to hear it; Amy shifts a little, swallowing thickly, watching, waiting.

The phone rings six times and goes to voicemail.

“He must still be asleep,” Karen mutters. Something like disappointment floods Amy’s face; the crease between her brows deepens. “Don’t worry, honey, he used to sleep through alarms all the time when he was a kid - probably still does, too, though you would know that better than I would at this point - don’t worry, don’t you worry, I’ll keep calling until he wakes up.”

She’s babbling, she can feel it, but she supposes something about it must calm Amy, for the crease seems to smooth out just a little bit, and the anguished quality of her fractured gaze seems to fade to a less-overwhelming level. She nods slowly, jaw working as she chews the inside of her cheek, and Karen suddenly becomes aware of a definite, unidentifiable shift in the air around them.

Karen opens her mouth to say something, but the sound of door opening somewhere behind her forces her to cut short.

“Oh, detective! It’s so great to finally see you awake!” A female voice booms. Karen tosses one quick glance over her shoulder - just long enough to absorb a long white coat and thick brunette curls - before she quickly stands and retreats to the furthest corner of the room. Instinct screams for her to duck out into the hallway to continue calling Jake, but she resists.

_ Not even for a second, _ she’d sworn.

“I’ve got a few things to go over with you, here, but - ah, officer?”

It takes a moment, but Karen realizes with a start that the doctor is talking to her. She turns, trying to look as innocent as possible. “Would you mind stepping out into the hallway for just a minute while I go over a few things with Ms. Santiago?”

“Actually, I’d really prefer it if she stayed.” Amy says before Karen has a chance to respond. “Also, it’s Detective Santiago. Not ‘miss.’”

“Right, of course, my apologies.” Karen barely suppresses a grin as she slowly turns back to face her corner. “My name is Doctor Ovington, and I’ve been looking after you since you checked in here!” Dr. Ovington says cheerfully. Karen shuffles forward another inch, trying to tuck herself into the corner, phone pressed against her ear. “Will you please look at that poster over there and let me know about where you’re at on the pain scale?”

“Um...a - a four, I guess,” Amy says uncertainly. Jake’s voicemail starts up in Karen’s ear again.

“Okay! That’s wonderful. Now, Amy - is it okay if I call you Amy?” There’s a pause, filled only in Karen’s head by the tinny ring of Jake’s cell phone. “Okay, great! Now, listen, Amy, you don’t have to be brave, here - if you’re in pain, I’m gonna really suggest that you don’t try to bottle it up. You’re in the hospital for a pretty major injury - you can tell us if you’re feeling any discomfort. Are you sure you’re at a four?”

“Positive.” Amy says, and Karen has to muffle a laugh at the restrained irritation in Amy’s tone.

“Okay! That’s perfect. I’m glad to hear it. Feel free to hit the Call Nurse button at any time if that changes! Now, I wanted to go over some of the things we’re treating you for here. You were brought in with a gunshot wound to your lower torso and a grade-two concussion. Now, the gunshot wound was actually pretty straight-forward, considering what a serious injury it is. The bullet didn’t pass all the way through. It got caught up in some soft tissue a few inches above your right hip. So you got lucky, in that it didn’t hit any major veins, arteries, or organs. As for the concussion, we were actually more concerned with the laceration than the actual swelling. Whatever you hit your head on was pretty jagged and you were losing a scary amount of blood! But we stitched you up and gave you a little transfusion, so you should be good to go on that now.

“Which brings me to...the more difficult part.” It takes every ounce of effort for Karen to resist whirling around at the sudden change in Ovington’s voice. She tries to remain in the exact same position as before, but she can feel the tension rippling down her spine mirrored in the stillness behind her. “We’ve come across some evidence of what appears to be some physical trauma associated with domestic abuse. Would you say that’s accurate?”

Karen  _ swears _ she can hear the saline solution dripping on the other side of the room. She holds her breath and squeezes her eyes shut, willing the obnoxious ring to fill her entire head and deafen her. “Yes,” comes Amy’s quiet, broken answer a moment later.

A surge of fury unleashes itself in Karen’s veins, her protective motherly instincts kicking into overdrive. She can’t even begin to fathom why anyone would ever  _ want _ to harm Amy.

“I think the most concerning area was the older laceration across your shoulder blades - it looks like you might have done some at-home stitches there, is that true?”

“Yes.” This one is somehow smaller than the last. Karen wants to cry.

“Do you know what the material was that they used?”

“It...it was string from a sewing kit, I think.” Karen tries to wipe the tears gathering on her lower lashes away as discreetly as possible. A  _ sewing kit _ ? She wants to wrap Amy up in a thousand blankets and force feed her chicken noodle soup or something, wants to kiss her forehead and tell her that she’s loved over and over again.

The following pause is long enough to warrant a quick glance backwards between unanswered calls; Ovington is scribbling something down on a notepad, and Amy is staring determinedly up at the ceiling. She’s paled a few degrees in the time Karen has spent in the corner, and Karen turns away before either of them can see the tears dripping silently down her face.

“Thread isn’t the best option, but it certainly isn’t the worst. And you got lucky, once again: there’s no sign of infection. I’ve actually got the results of your blood work right here - I haven’t looked at it yet - so I should be able to tell you for sure in just a second if there’s any kind of infection. But, Amy, I do have one last question, and this...well, there’s no sugar-coating it, this is the hardest question.” There’s a brief pause, and Karen hesitates, thumb hovering over the redial button made blurry by her unshed tears. “One common component in domestic abuse situations is a...higher risk of unwanted pregnancies. I’m sorry to ask this so bluntly, Amy, but was there...ah -”

“I was on birth control the whole time.” Amy interrupts, and Karen’s heart stops. The tenor of Amy’s voice is the exact sound associated with the desire to evaporate on the spot, and Karen has never wanted to hug anyone more.

“I can start treatment for injuries related to that, if you’d like,” Dr. Ovington offers gently.

The pause is longer now, almost quieter, until it’s suddenly punctured by a quiet sniffle. Karen whirls around, her own tears forgotten, and starts at the sight of Amy looking pointedly away, tears rolling down her sallow cheeks. “Sweetheart,” Karen says, voice coming out thick and tearful before she can stop herself. She crosses the space between them in two strides and perches on the side of the bed, arms raised in offering, and when Amy carefully leans into her side, Karen kisses the crown of her head and runs her fingers through her hair soothingly. “It’s okay, honey, it’s okay,” Karen says softly, and when Amy heaves for breath and releases a low, strangled moan - probably in conjunction with the corresponding pain in her tender abdomen - Karen’s suddenly struck by the realization that this is probably the first time in months she’s felt any kind of gentle affection. “I think that’s enough for right now,” Karen says as steadily as she can to Dr. Ovington.

Ovington grimaces sympathetically. “I just - I  _ do  _ need to go over her blood work -”

Karen cuts her off with an over-pronounced tut. “Please make it quick.” She says shortly.

Ovington nods and tips the file in her hands open across her lap, and Karen tightens her arms around Amy as the doctor scans quickly and efficiently over the page. “This actually looks really, really great, all things considered,” Ovington says absently a few moments later. “No infections, no STD’s, not pregnant - considering how high the odds were stacked against you, Amy, you made it out of this situation relatively scott-free.”

Amy turns her head slightly, away from the doctor, face half-buried in the crook of Karen’s neck. “Thank you.” Karen says rather sharply.

Ovington nods and backs away, eyes never leaving Amy. “I’m just a call away if you need anything,” she reminds them before bowing out of the room and closing the door behind her.

For a long time, the only sounds in the room are Amy quietly crying and Karen’s soft, rambling attempts at soothing her. “It’s okay, sweetheart, it’s okay, I promise you...it’s over now, it’s all over, no one’s gonna hurt you anymore, you’re safe now, you’ll be home soon...sh-h-h, it’s okay, it’s alright, honey, you’re okay…” Eventually, Amy’s tears have slowed, but she’s still tightly clinging to the front of Karen’s shirt, so Karen smooths her palm over Amy’s left temple and murmurs, “I hope I’m not the first one to say this, but I’m so  _ proud  _ of you, Amy. I’m  _ so proud _ .”

Amy stiffens against her, and when Karen leans away, Amy’s bloodshot eyes are full of wonder. “You are?” She asks softly.

“My God, of  _ course _ I am! Oh sweetheart, you’re practically a superhero! And I don’t even know what all you had to do while you were undercover, but knowing what I know about Jake’s time undercover combined with what that doctor was saying, I’d say you did a kick-ass job! I’m certainly impressed.”

A brief smile twitches across Amy’s face before giving way to a kind of timidity that sets Karen’s teeth on-edge. “Is Jake coming?” She asks tentatively.

“Y’know, he wouldn’t answer his phone - I’m just gonna call Rosa. She’s the one who dropped him off, so hopefully she has a key or something - maybe she can just go bang his front door down.” Karen scrolls through her recent calls and redials Rosa’s number.

“‘Lo?” Comes Rosa’s gruff, sleep-heavy answer four rings in.

“Sorry to wake you, hon, but I’ve been calling Jake for ten minutes now - Amy’s awake.”

Karen hears a shuffle and a bang and a distant, low groan. “She’s awake?” Rosa repeats, suddenly sounding far more aware.

“She is. You wouldn’t happen to still be with my son, would you?”

“Yeah, actually, he passed out right after he finished eating on the stupid couch -  _ Peralta, wake up _ \- we’ve been asleep in the living room this whole time -  _ your mother’s been calling you, idiot, why is your phone still on silent? _ \- has she been awake long?”

Karen hears a strangled yelp from Rosa’s end of the line that nearly drowns out the end of Rosa’s question. “Not long, but she’s asking for Jake - is he up and moving?”

“ _ Put pants on, you moron! _ Sorry, Mrs. Peralta - we’ll be there in ten minutes. Is - is Amy okay?”

Amy nods against Karen’s side. “I think she’ll be a lot better when you two get here.”

She hears another disjointed bang, and then - “ _ Twelve missed calls! _ ” Jake shouts, voice high-pitched and hoarse.

“Tell her we’ll be there soon.” Rosa says, her determination so palpable Karen can feel it through the phone. “Does she need anything? We’re at - I mean, we can drop by her place and grab anything -”

“Glasses,” Amy whispers.

“Her glasses? Honey,” she turns the phone down, leaning away to get a better look at Amy, “do you know where they are?”

“Jake says he knows,” Rosa interrupts before Amy has a chance to respond. “We’ll grab it. Anything else?”

Amy shakes her head. “Just the glasses.” Karen says.

“Great. Tell her we’ll be there in ten minutes.”

The line disconnects with a low beep. “Ten minutes, then,” Karen says brightly.

Amy nods slowly, her gaze drifting down to the arm Karen was so studiously painting before. “Are those azaleas?” She asks after a moment.

“They are,” Karen confirms, lifting Amy’s left hand to carefully extend her arm across Karen’s lap. “How’d you know?”

“They’re my favorite flower,” says Amy softly, eyes out of focus as they trace the twisting vine up her forearm.

Karen squeezes her hand. “I think I have enough time to add a few more blossoms, if you want,” she offers offhandedly.

Sixteen minutes later, when the door is flung open and a panting and a frazzled Jake and Rosa stumble into the room, Karen is just putting the finishing touches on the blossom she’d started on the inner ridge of Amy’s forearm. She peers up at the two newcomers over the rims of her reading glasses, watching Jake’s gaze flicker from Amy to Amy’s arm to Karen. His mouth is open as he heaves for breath, an unfamiliar light blue overnight bag hanging by the well-worn straps wound around his fingers at his side, confusion sketched deep into the lines of his face. “Are you painting, ma?” He asks, his incredulity clear despite his lack of breath.

Karen smiles, a little wave of delight washing through her system. “Sure am,” she says, turning her attention back to Amy’s arm, now taut with tension where it lays on the mattress. “Wanna see?”

Rosa takes the bag from Jake’s hand and hauls it over to the counter as Jake quickly darts forward and shuffles into the space between Karen and the bedside table. He pauses, hand hovering over Amy’s left shoulder, before he seems to bite the bullet. He grips Amy’s shoulder firmly - not enough to hurt her, obviously, but enough that the tips of his fingers go white under the pressure. “Flowers,” he says faintly.

“Azaleas.” Karen corrects. “Amy’s favorites. I had no idea.”

The chuckle that follows sounds forced and choked, and from the corner of her eye, Karen notes the way his grip seems to ripple against Amy’s shoulder. She’s just considering offering him his chair back when the thick tension is cut by a quiet hiccup from the bed. “Jake?” Comes Amy’s small, quivering voice.

Jake’s reaction is both instinctive and immediate. His entire body shifts, concaves down into what Karen can only describe as a protective hunch, his free hand moving to grasp the one stretched toward Karen. Karen stands and twists away automatically, clearing her throat at the stinging lump that suddenly rises there. It’s overwhelming, just how painfully vulnerable they both are. The amount of effort it takes to get the motherly instincts rearing up in her chest under control should qualify as the eighth wonder of the world.

“I can take you home, Mrs. P,” Rosa says quietly once Karen’s drawn even at her side. Karen glances back at the bed - Jake’s sank back in the seat but has dragged it as close as he can, right hand clasped tightly around Amy’s hand, gently caressing her cheekbone with the knuckles of his left. Karen nods absently, too distracted by the blinding glow surrounding the young couple to formulate an articulate response.

Words come hurtling back when Rosa reaches for the doorknob. “Call me if either one of you needs anything,” she says. Jake glances at her distractedly and nods. “And Amy, hon?”

Amy’s head turns toward the door, question written distinctly across her features.

“I’m so proud of you.”


	15. been wandering all night (b)

Amy’s distracted - despite the blurry quality of her surroundings, she’s minutely aware of the fact that Jake is shifting restlessly in his seat while he watches his mother leave. His grip around her hand rhythmically tightens and loosens, back and forth like a rising and falling tide as he seems to debate the merits of gentleness versus relief. Amy’s still smiling at Karen’s last comment, she can feel the ache forming in the slopes of her cheeks, but she just can’t wipe it away; not when Jake’s blessedly familiar (though admittedly hazy) profile is a mere foot away, tilted toward her like he’s about to crawl across the bed.

The door clicks shut and he turns back to her immediately, eyes still holding a bit of the wild brightness from when he’d come running in just a minute earlier. Amy’s just relearning the sharp line of his jaw when she’s struck with a sudden realization: they’re alone.

For the first time in months, they’re well and truly alone.

“Where’s everyone else?” She asks.

“Work. They stayed for the first day, but - this whole thing has been a PR nightmare for the Nine-Nine. They’re all having to work really hard to help the precinct recover. Terry’s letting me take off, though, to - well, to hang out here. Y’know, so you aren’t - so you don’t have to be here by yourself.”

He swallows thickly, his eyes flickering back and forth from holding her gaze to studying their joined hands in a nervous tick. “Wait, why’s... _Terry’s_ letting you take off?”

“He’s acting captain now. Wuntch fired the Vulture the night of the raid.”  Savage satisfaction twitches across his face. “She did it in the waiting room in front of all of us. Even your FBI handlers were there. It was so awesome, seriously, I thought Holt was gonna short-circuit.”

His ‘ _I wish you’d been there to see it_ ’ is unspoken, but the impact of it is as real as his hand gripping hers is.

She pictures Agent Larson, who probably watched the whole thing happen with carefully restrained disdain. She groans, and Jake leans forward, face ablaze with concern. “I’m okay,” she says quickly, and he appears to relax marginally. “I just - Larson’s gonna absolutely kill me.”

“Larson - your main handler? Why would she do that?”

“Because I’m sure she’s figured out you guys were involved - and she told me she’d pull me out of the situation if things got too intense and I thought I could hide it but the doctor could tell and I know they’re gonna ask me at the debrief -”

“Amy,” Jake interrupts, “she’s not gonna kill you. I promise. She...well, she wasn’t too happy with me or the rest of the squad, but - you didn’t _ask_ us to interfere. We just kinda...did it. If anything, she’s gonna kill _us._ As for the whole…” he gestures over her body vaguely with his free hand, momentarily looking as though he’s going to throw up. “Y’know. The...the _situation_ with the _guy_...if she can’t understand why you didn’t say anything, then she doesn’t know you at all.”

Amy’s breath catches. His eyes gleam with earnestness, with understanding and forgiveness, and she feels her chest unfurl at the sight. “I missed you,” she tries to say it confidently, but the words come out a bit strangled. Jake’s brows draw together in concern, his ever-adjusting grip shifting once again so that his fingers curl around her palm a bit more.

“I missed you, too,” he says wistfully, longingly. She’s not sure how, or why, but he’s restraining himself; she can feel it vibrating in the air between them. He’s still sitting down but even she can see how close to the edge of his seat he is, body contorted into more of a squat than anything else. Perhaps it’s best if he stays there, in his own space, away from the still-tender ache in her gut (so maybe the pain is more of a five than a four, there’s no way in hell she’s losing any more daylight to morphine’s overwhelming power); perhaps it’s best to keep this space and talk about all that has been left unspoken between them over the last nine months.

She’s reasoned it out logically, and yet: “ _Jake_.”

His name tastes sweet when it rolls off her tongue, the weight of it as sure and steady as his presence in her life has grown to be, and suddenly the distance between them is absurdly long and she’s pulling him to her by the hand clasped around hers and reaching for him with her free hand. There’s this split-second of hesitation - a moment of weighed options - and then he’s standing again and he’s got a hand planted on the mattress on her other side and he’s kissing her slowly and softly. Amy responds the best she can, ignoring the pricks of pain from the needles littering her right arm as she lifts her hand to lightly grip the back of his neck, her touch both clinging and anchoring. He hums in approval when her fingers snake into the fringe of too-long curls lining the collar of his t-shirt.

It’s unhurried and languid, more of a tender reacquaintance that makes her curl her toes into the bed sheets than the frenzied mess of clashing teeth that was the last two times they’ve done this. He seems a bit more than reluctant to pull back, choosing instead to tilt his forehead down against hers while his lower body twists until he’s perched on the mattress at her side. The pad of his thumb smooths a warm arcing path across the top of her cheekbone as he traces the other with his lips, and Amy feels her eyes stinging at the gentle familiarity of it all.

It almost feels as though a lifetime has passed by the time he finally lifts his head away - a lifetime of warmth and contentment, that is, and really when she considers that just three days ago she was resigned to the fact that she was going to be brutally murdered by a mob boss it’s that much more fulfilling. She longs to tell him as much, but there’s a sizeable lump sitting pretty in her throat and she’s afraid that if she opens her mouth too wide, gut-wrenching sobs will be the only thing to come out.

So instead she slides her hands down from where they’re covering the backs of his and grips his wrists and squeezes, looking up at him earnestly, willing him to understand.

She supposes it must be a true testament to their years-long partnership when comprehension seems to flicker in his unwavering gaze. “Amy,” he murmurs. It’s just as soft and gentle as his hands are against her face, lined at the furthest edges with a delicate, lacey kind of awe. A blinding smile threatens to break what she’s sure is her reverent expression. His eyes are unashamedly roving her face, like he can’t believe she’s real and in front of him once again. “ _Amy_ ,” he breathes.

She opens her mouth to say his name but all that comes out is a pathetic hiccupping squeak, not unlike the one she’d released right when he first got to her. He pushes his palms beneath her jaw to tilt her head back and leans in again and this time his lips land against her forehead, where they linger just long enough for Amy to dissolve.

She can feel every last stitch tugging painfully at her skin as she heaves for breath, and the pained gasps and grunts leave her mouth unbidden. Jake stiffens for only an instant before his forehead bumps against hers once again. “Sh,” he soothes, “it’s okay, Ames, it’s okay, I’m sorry, please don’t cry…”

His words reach her as though through a long tunnel, the cadence settling over her like a well-loved blanket, gently covering her frayed and exposed nerves. It feels like her heart and mind have been cracked open, everything she’s kept so carefully compartmentalized spilling out into one big mess that she is powerless to clean up. The vulnerability of it all would usually be enough to trigger a massive panic attack, but here in this calm, secluded space, all she feels is safe and protected. Because Jake’s there with her, holding her together, and when it all flows out of her he’ll be there to help her clean it all up again. So she lets herself cry - for Frankie, for Vinny and Doug, for Captain Holt, for her squad, for Jake, and finally, for herself.

Jake has shifted to the position his mother had occupied earlier by the time she’s tapered off into quiet, dazed sniffles. He smooths his palm up her upper arm slowly and grasps her left hand tightly in his other, grounding her to him, a constant reminder that he’s there. “You okay?” He murmurs once her breathing has evened out.

She nods, eyes half-lidded, leaning heavily against him. “Missed you,” she mumbles rather pathetically.

He presses another lingering kiss to the crown of her head and briefly runs his fingers through her hair. “You have no idea how much I missed you,” he murmurs back.

There’s something about his tone - a restrained kind of darkness, maybe - that makes Amy shiver. The tight squeeze of his fingers seems to constrict even further for a moment, and then he leans away to peer down at her. “Are you cold?”

“Um -” truthfully, she hadn’t been giving it much thought, but now that her body has adjusted to the warmth of his proximity, she’s suddenly aware of her frigid extremities. “Yeah, actually. I think a nurse can bring a heated blanket or -”

“No need!” Jake says brightly. He pulls away from her completely and even though he swoops down to kiss her cheek, Amy has to work very hard to keep the pout off of her face at the loss. She watches him round the bed to grab her old battered overnight bag from the counter. “I figured you’d be cold - Rosa and I stopped by your place to get your glasses and while we were there, I grabbed this.”

He produces the maroon sweater-knit blanket from the back of her couch and Amy very nearly bursts into tears again at the sight of it. It’s astounding how hard her heart clenches as Jake unfolds it and moves to drape it across her body. The familiar scent of home washes over her as the blanket descends and Amy closes her eyes as she breathes it in, ignoring Jake’s quiet, affectionate chuckle in favor of balling some of the material up in her fist and burying her mouth and nose in it. She moans softly, and behind her eyelids she can picture her living room, lit by the same soft, washed-out light currently spilling into this sterile hospital room.

There’s a new component to the smell, though, one that is equally familiar but somehow out of place. She furrows her brow and opens her eyes to slits, trying to identify what it is that she’s smelling, but from the corner of her eye she can see Jake pulling more things out of her bag. “I promise I didn’t mess with these while you were gone,” he says solemnly as he presents her old plastic glasses.

She snorts, and then leans toward him when he silently offers to do the honors. His touch is just as careful as before, easing the arms over her ears and the bridge between lenses up the delicate line of her nose rather than just jamming them on like she knows he’s seen her do a thousand times, and when she opens her eyes his grinning face is thrown into sharp relief. “Whole new world?” He jokes, though the underlying current of genuine concern is undeniable.

Now that she can see clearly, she realizes he’s openly marveling at her, and it’s almost enough to steal her breath away. He’s looking at her with all the hopefulness in the world and for a brief moment, she thinks she’s going to burst. “A dazzling place I never knew,” Amy confirms once she’s able to speak again, and his face splits into a wide, delighted grin. He starts digging through her bag again and she lifts the folds of her blanket back up absently, breathing in the scent. “This smells weird,” she says offhandedly.

Jake pauses, regarding her through his lashes. “What does it smell like?”

“My apartment, but, like...not? It almost smells like...I dunno, _boy._ ”

He lowers the bag slowly, face blossoming into a delicate shade of pink. “I, uh,” he coughs and reaches up, scratching at the back of his neck. “I...may have slept with it once. Or twice.”

Something about the way he’s studiously avoiding her gaze tells her it was probably a few more times than just twice. She ponders for a moment, briefly considering teasing him for it, before the mental image of Jake asleep on her couch tangled up in this very blanket flashes through her mind. It’s obvious that he’s embarrassed, but when she imagines their roles reversed - when she imagines going nine months without him, nine months knowing only that he’s in immense danger for certain - she realizes she probably would have lived in one of his hoodies. She longs to squeeze his hand reassuringly, but since he’s toying with the zipper of her bag she settles for the next best thing.

“Isn’t it the warmest blanket on the planet?” She asks instead.

Jake’s face is lit with yet another grin when his gaze darts back to her face. “More like the _galaxy_ ,” he amends, and she nods in appreciation. “Um, also, I brought this -” he produces her worn and faded extra-large NYPD sweatshirt from the bag. “I wasn’t sure how long they were gonna make you keep the IVs, but I figured you’d hate the stupid hospital gown for how thin it is and would probably kill for this once all the needles are out, so I grabbed it.”

He shifts his legs nervously, and she can hear other, harder objects rolling against each other in the bag laid across his lap. “That’s - that was really considerate, thank you.” She says, reaching for the sweatshirt. It’s just as soft as she remembers it being, but she pushes down the wave of nostalgia and focuses on the bag. “Jake...what else did you pack in that thing?”

He peers into the bag and shrugs. “Not a lot, really. Just your phone charger, your toothbrush, and your toothpaste. And your shampoo and soap. And Rosa suggested I grab your moisturizer? And your brush, obviously, and a hairdryer ‘cause...well, I figured the hospital wouldn’t have hairdryers. Oh, and a few pairs of socks and underwear? Rosa grabbed that stuff, not me, don’t worry. There’s a pair of sweatpants in there, too.” He looks up and pauses at the wide-eyed look of disbelief on Amy’s face. “What? Did I forget something?”

“I - Jake,” she shakes her head, dumbfounded, as he watches her closely. “You are - you’re the _best_ person I know.”

It’s a poor representation of the depth of everything going on inside her - the tornado of emotions clashing with the latent medication still fogging her system making for some very unsettling inner turmoil - but a genuine smile folds the lines of his face up into a breathtaking expression that makes Amy’s heart skip.

As evidenced by the pulse monitor which, until that moment, had been quietly, steadily beeping in the background. But now it announces her elevating heart rate as though through a loudspeaker, drawing both of their gazes up for a brief moment.

“Traitor,” Amy mutters darkly.

His laughter is both light and loud, ringing sharply from the base of his throat to fill the empty space surrounding them. He seems surprised by it, based on his widened eyes and shifting grip on her overnight bag. But once it’s escaped, more comes flooding out, and before she knows it he’s got his face pressed into the mattress down near her hip to muffle the sounds, his shoulders quaking merrily. She laughs along with him, more amused by his reaction than anything else, though the stitches pulling at her stomach and scalp keep her from being quite so animated. She settles instead for tangling her fingers in his messy hair, fascinated by how easily his soft locks slip between her fingers.

He keeps his head down on the mattress but turns it so that he can look at her, and the tender, open affection with which he studies her makes her breath catch. “I really, really missed you, Amy Santiago.” He sighs.

* * *

The words have barely left Jake’s mouth before the door opens behind him. He turns quickly, hand darting out to grab Amy’s on instinct, before realizing that the newcomer is none other than Agent Larson. “Amy!” She says brightly, and Jake has to choke down a sudden urge to yell at her to leave them alone. He hadn’t realized how thick their little bubble of solitude was until it was broken, and now that their space is being invaded he desperately misses it. “It’s good to see you up and moving again.” Larson says as Jake pushes the chair back to face the woman head-on.

“Hi, Agent Larson,” Amy says, and her voice now rings with all the fatigue he was anticipating that she would have on the ride to the hospital. “S’good to see you, too.”

“Officer Peralta,” Larson nods to him, as if she hasn’t been seeing him here in this exact position every single day since Amy’s been in here. He flashes her a tight smile and nods back. “Well, Amy, I’m sure you’re very eager to get back to your real life, so I’ve taken the liberty of bringing your debriefing paperwork here with me.” The briefcase dangling from her hand twitches. “If you’d like, we can get started on that right now.”

He’s known, from the moment he’s walked in here, that at some point he would be asked to leave for her debriefing. Still, the theoretical knowledge did nothing to prepare him for just how desperate his desire to stay close to her would be. He tries to choke it down - this is a good thing, after all, the last step in this never-ending nightmare. Once this is over, Amy’s free.

But before he even has a chance to steel himself, Amy’s fingers tighten slightly around his palm. “I-I don’t - I don’t know if -”

“The sooner we get started on this, the sooner we can let your family know that the mission is over.” Larson says firmly.

“They don’t _know_ ?” Amy cries, and Jake jerks toward her automatically, his grip around her hand never faltering. “Oh my God, I’ve been in here for _three days_ and you’re telling me they don’t -”

“They’re currently under the impression that you’re still undercover, Amy.”

“Jake -” Amy casts a wild glance in his direction “- Jake said that this whole thing has been a PR nightmare, so I _know_ the shootout was on the news, how could they _not know yet_?”

“I’m very sorry, Amy.” Larson says, with only the faintest shred of apology in her voice.

“Ames,” Jake says softly. Her anguished gaze flicks to his face. “I can call your mom right now, if you want. I’ll tell her everything. D’you want me to call her?”

She’s nodding before he even finishes asking the question. “Please,” she whispers, eyes glazed with tears.

Larson clears her throat pointedly. “The federal mandate clearly states -”

“It’s been _nine months_.” Jake interrupts. “They deserve to know that she’s safe. Besides, they live in Jersey. Start your stupid debrief, or whatever, and by the time you’re done her family will only just be getting here. No harm, no foul.”

Larson’s frowning, but he can tell the argument is won. “I would kindly request that you move to the hallway to place the call, officer.” She says stiffly.

He moves to stand, but Amy’s grip suddenly becomes vice-like. He turns his head back toward her and his heart clenches at her panic-stricken face. “Hey,” he says softly, twisting back toward her and crouching down so that he’s on her level. “It’s okay. I’m gonna be right outside that door. I _promise_ I won’t go anywhere. If you get overwhelmed or upset, if you need me _at all_ , all you have to do is yell and I will come _running._ Okay?”

Her jaw is clenched as she nods. “I’m sorry,” she whispers, “I don’t mean to be - y’know, _clingy_ or -”

“Don’t apologize, Ames. You’re not,” he says firmly. “Not at all. If I didn’t have to leave, I wouldn’t. This is gonna be torture. The only thing that makes this okay is that after this, you’re done, and we can all finally move on with our lives.”

A brief smile flashes across her face. “You’re right,” she says softly.

He leans forward and kisses her just long enough to make her sigh, tension slowly leaking out of her, before he pulls back and stands fully. “You got this.” He whispers. She clenches her jaw. “Right outside that door,” he reminds her. He squeezes her hand one last time before letting her fingers slip from his as he backs toward the door.

Larson’s face is the last thing he sees before the door closes behind him. He’s left alone in the hallway outside, something like loss sitting heavily in his chest. Officer Daniels, Jake’s patrol partner (when he’s forced to have one) is sitting guard to Jake’s right. “All good in there?” Daniels asks curiously.

“Fine. It’s fine. Listen, she’s getting debriefed right now and I’m not allowed to be in there while it’s happening but I promised I wouldn’t go far - d’you maybe wanna take a break? Should be about an hour, maybe two. You can go get lunch or something.”

“Sure.” Daniels stands and pauses briefly, running his hands over his pockets until his fingers clench around his wallet. “You want anything while I’m out?”

“I’m good.” Jake says. “Thanks, man.”

Daniels claps Jake on the shoulder before walking away, whistling loudly and nodding to a passing nurse before disappearing around the corner of the hall. Jake waits until his whistling has faded before heaving a sigh and running his hand through his hair.

He’s had Amy’s mom’s phone number saved in his phone for four years now, since the day he met her; she’d grabbed his wrist as soon as Amy told her he was her partner and demanded they exchange phone numbers. “You never know what could happen,” Camila had said seriously while Amy blushed and rolled her eyes. Jake had been more than willing to exchange information with her - shooting Amy smug, teasing grins all the while - but he never thought he’d ever have to use it (at least not for this reason; he’s called her once or twice purely to annoy Amy). Until now.

“Jacob,” Camila sounds even more tired than he feels when she answers the phone. It’s all she gets out, but he can hear her shallow breathing, the desperation and fear clashing with hopefulness all at once. He thinks she might have been in the middle of doing dishes; he can hear running water and the distinct clink of ceramic landing on ceramic.

“Hi, Mrs. Santiago,” Jake says, wearily sinking down into Daniels’ seat as the water shuts off.

“Do you -” she pauses and audibly swallows. “Has something happened?”

He resists the urge to heave another sigh - he’s not even really sure where to begin, here. Instead he bows his head slightly and pinches the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “Um - yes. But the first thing you should know - it’s over.”

She laughs, a choked, relieved, delighted sound, but it cuts short before it has a chance to really blossom. “Why isn’t my daughter calling to tell me this?” She asks, voice low.

“She’s okay. Amy’s okay. She’s being debriefed right now, which is why she can’t call you, but I told her I would do it for her. But...but you should know...she actually _was_ involved in that shootout a few days ago.”

There’s a long pause. “Jacob.” Camila says quietly.

He huffs a quiet breath and steels himself. “Amy’s been shot.”

Camila makes a sound, a loud, distressed wail, and Jake winces. He guesses at least a couple of Amy’s brothers must be there with her, for suddenly Camila'send of the line is garbled with multiple male voices probably frantically demanding to know what she’s just heard.

“Jake?” A new, vaguely familiar voice is suddenly the loudest in the receiver. “Jake, it’s Manny. What the hell is going on? What happened to Amy?”

Manny, the brother who comes into the precinct every other month to take Amy out to lunch. Manny, the brother who used to crawl into her bed and hold her hand when she got scared in the middle of a thunderstorm. Manny, the brother whom Amy considers herself to be the closest to.

“Manny - God, I’m so sorry, is your mom okay?”

“ _What happened to my sister_?”

“She - she got shot, but she’s okay! She’s in the hospital now but I swear she’s okay.”

Manny shouts something in Spanish over the din in the background, and the cacophony suddenly dies down a bit. “How bad is it?”

“Not bad. Really not bad. The bullet hit her lower torso and got caught in some soft tissue, so the surgery was pretty minimal. She was out for three days because she just hadn’t been sleeping a whole lot leading up to it and her body needed the time to recover. The FBI has been making us lie to you guys about it until she woke up and got debriefed, and she literally just woke up, like, twenty minutes ago. They’re debriefing her now.”

“God, I -” Manny pauses, and Jake waits. He hears Manny’s breath hitch, and he realizes with an unpleasant lurch that Manny’s started crying. “Is she okay?” He mumbles haltingly.

Jake very suddenly feels an overwhelming urge to cry. “Yeah,” he says, his voice hoarse. “I’ve been with her this whole time. She hasn’t been alone. They’re making me wait outside while they debrief her, but I’m literally right outside her door. She’s not alone.”

“Good,” Manny says, choked with relief. “We’re coming - what hospital is it?”

“Brooklyn Methodist.”

“If you get back in there before we get there, will you tell her that we love her? Please?”

“Yeah, of course. How many of you guys are coming? Just in case she asks.”

“Me and mom and dad, obviously, and then the twins are here and so is Luis. Are they cracking down on how many people are allowed in to see her at once or something?”

“No, not anymore, but I don’t want her feeling overwhelmed, you know? I just wanna make sure she’s prepared.”

“You’re a good dude, Peralta,” Manny says. There’s an air of distractedness to his tone - as though he’s concentrating more on finding car keys than the words leaving his mouth. But Jake feels himself light up anyways. “We’re leaving now. Should be there in a couple of hours.”

“As soon as I can get back in there, I’ll let her know.”

“Thank you. Seriously, man, thank you so much.”

“It’s not a problem,” Jake says weakly, lifting his free hand to run his fingers through his hair. “I’ll see you guys in a few hours.”

Manny hangs up without saying goodbye, and Jake’s arms flop down heavily against his legs. He lets his head fall back and bump against the wall behind him, closes his eyes, and inhales deeply. The empty hallway smells like disinfectant and is as quiet as the library Nana used to take him and Gina to on Saturday afternoons. Larson’s voice, muffled through the door, is the only sound reaching him.

He hadn’t really felt it in all the chaos following his return to consciousness, but now that he’s alone, he can feel the deep-seated fatigue clinging to his bones. Rosa had taken him back to Amy’s apartment and he’d showered while she spread their takeout across the coffee table. He’d fallen asleep sprawled across the couch halfway through his meal, and while it had been deep and dreamless, he felt like he’d been dunked in a tub of freezing water when Rosa had hurled the television remote at his head to wake him up.

The prospect of finding an empty hospital bed and curling up beneath the thin sheets is enticing at the most base level, but it’s more of a passing fantasy than anything else. Still, he finds his eyelids drooping and his head lolling after just a few minutes of sitting by himself.

_To: catch DIAZ hands_

_have u told everyone abt amy waking up?_

_Sent: 02:35 PM_

 

_From: catch DIAZ hands_

_Nope thought you should have the honors. She still awake?_

_Received: 02:36 PM_

 

_To: catch DIAZ hands_

_yah theyre debriefing her now tho_

_Sent: 02:36 PM_

 

_To: catch DIAZ hands_

_im abt to fall asleep in the hallway sos_

_Sent: 02:36 PM_

 

_From: catch DIAZ hands_

_Txt the group and we’ll all come up there and keep you awake_

_Received: 02:38 PM_

 

_To: catch DIAZ hands_

_ur a genius_

_Sent: 02:38 PM_

Jake has to scroll down a considerable distance in his inbox to find the Nine-Nine group chat - none of them have touched it since Amy left.

_King Jake to_ **_we got 99 problems_ **

_GUYS amys awake!!!!!! come to brooklyn methodist and keep me company while i wait for her fam and the fbi_

_Sent: 02:38 PM_

_  
_ He sees the grey dots pop up at the bottom of the screen, but before the response rolls in, Jake dozes off with his head against the wall between him and Amy.


	16. try to take what's lost and broke and make it right (a)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the beginning of the end!! this is the last chapter!! i can't believe it!!
> 
> WE DID IT KIDS WE MADE IT TO THE END

Jake can’t remember if Amy likes wontons or spring rolls more.

It’s a strange thing to forget, considering he’s been placing the same order for her once or twice a month for nearly six years now. But tonight, when he’d placed the call, he’d gotten through detailing her Gong Bao Chicken and then froze. Because he couldn’t remember if it was wontons or spring rolls she gets on the side. And after a few seconds of paralysis, he’d panicked and done the  _ logical  _ thing: he ordered both.

So now he’s standing outside of her apartment door with the bag of takeout in his hand and he’s feeling rather stupid, because there are wontons  _ and  _ spring rolls inside this bag. He’s working very hard to remind himself that it’s not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things - she’s been gone nine months, after all, any normal human being might forget a detail or two about another after such a long time apart - but he can’t quite bring himself to knock on that front door because he knows he’ll have to explain why he ordered both, and the absolute last thing he wants in the entire known universe is for Amy to think he forgot one single thing about her.

Even if it  _ is _ something rather stupid, like the side she gets on her usual takeout order. He  _ did _ remember how much she hates dumplings, though, which he plans on telling her when he’s forced into admitting the truth about the wontons and spring rolls. The dumplings he ordered for  _ himself  _ are safely hidden beneath a healthy helping of rice in one of his boxes.

The wontons and the spring rolls are in the same box, though, and Amy’s spare key is still on his key ring, and he’s standing on her welcome mat completely at a loss for what to do. Knocking seems too formal - he’s practically been  _ living  _ here for the last nine months, after all, and before that he didn’t so much  _ knock  _ as he did throw his entire body against the door to make as much noise as possible, which in turn generated the most affectionately exasperated Off-Duty Amy possible. But he can’t just  _ walk in _ now, even if he  _ does _ have her key - that might come off as being too presumptuous, might make her think he’s jumping to conclusions.

The reality of the situation is that is actually a hair’s breadth away from completely losing his mind because he hasn’t had one single moment alone with Amy in nearly three weeks.  _ Three whole weeks _ . Because precisely ten minutes after he texted the squad’s group message, they all showed up to keep him company. And three hours after  _ that _ (an hour after Agent Larson left), half of Amy’s family showed up. The rest of the family appeared the following day, and after that Jake was reduced to trying to find a chair to stand on just to catch a glimpse of her face over the sea of bodies constantly flooding her hospital room.

They released her from the hospital three days ago - too early, if you ask him, but  _ apparently  _ his medical opinion is irrelevant (according to the nurse with the kind, knowing smile who fielded his dozens of questions half an hour before Amy left in a wheelchair pushed by one of her brothers) - and he’s been biding his time alone in his apartment in the meantime. It’s a good thing, he reasons, considering he hasn’t hardly been home in months and his apartment reflects as much; his refrigerator was even smellier than he thought it would be.

(Starkly unlike Amy’s refrigerator, which he made sure to deep clean and stock to maximum capacity the day before she was cleared to leave the hospital. He’d also dusted her bookshelves and disinfected her kitchen and bathroom counters and washed all of her sheets and blankets. He’d never been so intentionally clean in his  _ life _ .

But it never even crossed his mind to complain. He couldn’t, because he knew how much it would de-stress her.

Quite the opposite of the way he feels right now, incidentally.)

It’s been three days since he’s seen her and even longer since he’s had a real conversation and he can’t remember if she likes spring rolls or wontons and doesn’t know if he should knock or just walk in and he’s probably going to die out here, frozen on her welcome mat.

In the end, Jake knocks.

He regrets it a moment later upon remembering she’s still recovering from a  _ gunshot wound _ and is probably ( _ hopefully _ ) in bed. He curses under his breath and fumbles for his keys, hoping against all hope that either one of her brothers is on the way to open the door now or that she just hasn’t gotten up yet. It’s quiet on the other side of the door, and he isn’t quite sure what to make of that, but it doesn’t matter because his key ring is finally loose and he’s got her door unlocked and opened just a half-second later.

“Amy?” He calls once he’s over the threshold, shuffling inside just far enough to close the door behind him. Her entryway is dark and it gives way to an equally dark living room, but he can see the artificial glow of a television screen casting long shadows across the ceiling and he can hear the quiet creak of her floorboards adjusting to shifting weight, the sound growing closer all the while. Her silhouette appears around the corner at the end of the entryway a moment later, and even in the scant lighting he can see her brows furrowed in curiosity.

“Jake,” she says, and it might lilt upward at the end like a question, but when his name leaves her lips the sound is the most disarmingly sweet thing he’s ever heard. It feels like he’s been sucker-punched, all the air knocked out of him at once, and it’s really a wonder that he manages to stay upright instead of stumbling backwards into her front door like his quaking knees want him to. He blinks, dazed, and watches her feel along the wall for the light switch. A second later the scene is thrown into sharp relief, and he practically has to squint beneath the sudden onslaught of light.

She’s very clearly dressed for bed - her tank top is baggy and loose and from the looks of it, her sweatpants are hanging low enough on her hips that the elastic band doesn’t come anywhere near the bullet wound. 

“Hi,” he says, but it comes out choked. A small crease appears between her brows as she takes a step toward him. He means to say something more, but the words are caught in his throat and he can hardly breathe from the sight of her.

Her hair is down, curling loosely at the ends the way it always does when she’s been awake and running her hands through it for too long. She takes another step toward him, her gaze flicking down from his face to the bag in his hand. “Hi,” she says softly. “What’s that?”

“Chinese,” he says, presenting the bag to her. “But I - it’s only enough for - for two.”

The corner of her mouth quirks up. “That’s good,” she says, loosely crossing her arms over her middle, “since there are only two of us here.”

He’s not ashamed to admit that the realization that her family isn’t here sends a wave of relief surging through his system.

“Do you wanna come inside?” She asks, tilting her head back toward her living room.

“I couldn’t remember if you get spring rolls or wontons on the side,” he blurts. She furrows her brow, and he winces. “I mean I - I forgot. Like I’ve ordered your takeout order a  _ thousand times _ but I couldn’t remember if it was wontons or spring rolls, so I...ordered both?”

Her eyes have widened and she’s staring up at him like his head has just morphed into a cloud of butterflies. Jake’s heart lurches horribly, even as a slow smile blossoms across her face. “I like both,” she finally says, and she says it slowly, like she’s afraid that by speaking too harshly he might be scared away. “Are you okay?”

“ _ No _ , I - I  _ forgot your order _ . I feel like such a  _ jackass _ , Amy, because I swear to  _ God  _ I’ve spent the last nine months thinking about you and missing you  _ so much _ and - and  _ wishing  _ you were  _ here _ , but I forgot your  _ stupid Chinese order _ -”

“ _ Jake _ .” She says his name sharply, suddenly in his space and gently squeezing his upper arms, and his voice dies right there in his throat. “You didn’t forget. I get  _ both _ . Sometimes I ask for wontons, sometimes I ask for spring rolls. You didn’t forget  _ anything _ .”

He blinks down at her, trying desperately to absorb the information. “You order  _ both _ ?” He breathes.

A smile twitches across her features. “I do.”

“I...I didn’t forget?” He asks, quiet and hopeful.

“You didn’t forget.” She confirms.

It’s all he can do to keep from swooping down and kissing her right then and there; instead, he sways backwards and releases a quick, breathless laugh. Her answering smile is blinding. “God,” he says with a shake of his head, “I need to lay down.”

“Come in,” she tells him, her hand sliding down his arm to take his free hand to pull him further into her apartment. She flicks the lights off as they pass the switch and he’s enveloped in a familiar kind of darkness, easily able to identify corners and edges of furniture standing between him and her couch. His heart is still beating uncomfortably fast, but her hand is warm in his and the scent of her apartment is just as soothing as it has been for the last nine months, so he lets her lead him forward. “My family left a few hours ago,” she tells him once she’s reached the couch, answering his unvoiced question. 

“Oh,” he says, unsure of what to say. She smiles, and he grins back. It’s absurd, how nervous he suddenly feels. “That’s...I mean, um...is that a good thing?”

She nods, trapping her lower lip between her teeth. “I love them,” says Amy slowly, “but they’re a  _ little  _ overbearing. Especially since I’m - since I got -” she stops, looking uncertain, and waves her free hand vaguely over her left side. He follows the movement with his eyes and realizes he’s clenching his jaw. “Well, you know. Anyways, my mom was ready to move in with me for the next three months.” He forces out a laugh and sets the takeout on her coffee table, hyperaware of the fact that her hand is still in his. “I had to  _ beg  _ her to leave. She has my doctor’s number  _ memorized _ .”

He squeezes her hand when he laughs this time, and her eyes widen a degree. They both look down at the same time - he hadn’t realized it before, but the tips of her fingers have gone white for how tightly she’s squeezing - and when he meets her gaze a moment later, her face is flushed pink. “I -” he stops, mouth still open, mesmerized by the small, repetitive jump in her jaw from where she’s biting down on the inside of her cheek.

When his mouth snaps shut and the silence keeps going, she shifts forward an inch. Her lips part, but her breath seems to catch in her throat. It’s the first time he can remember ever being at such a loss for what to say to her. His heart is in his throat, and when he opens his mouth, the words that tumble out come from somewhere near the pit of his stomach.

“God, I really miss you,” he whispers.

And suddenly she’s pressed against him, head turned to rest in the dip of his shoulder, fingers digging almost painfully into his back. He hugs her back instantly, one arm wound tightly around her shoulders while he gently smooths the palm of his other hand down the curve of her spine. It’s so mind-numblingly good to have her this close again - such a dizzying kind of relief to know that she won’t have to leave in a moment’s notice - that the heedy lightness that works through his system feels like pure helium.

“I miss you, too,” she whispers, and it’s not lost on him that they’re speaking in the present tense. He’s not even really sure what it means; all he knows is that it feels like his heart has been torn to shreds, and is only just now beginning to heal. 

They’re quiet, swaying side to side just slightly, and it’s become a fight to keep his eyelids from drooping closed against her soft, warm presence still and safe in his arms. “I’m really glad you came over,” she eventually murmurs. He huffs out a laugh through his nose and catches a long curl between his fingers, gently tugging at the silky strands. “I’ve been sitting here trying to draft a text to you for over an hour now. I couldn’t figure out how to ask you to come over casually.”

“All you have to do is say ‘come over’ and I’ll  _ literally  _ come running.” He says honestly, and she muffles her laugh into his collarbone. “I don’t even  _ care _ , Ames, like at this point you’re lucky I haven’t been sleeping in my car outside of your apartment for the last three days.” Amy laughs outright at that, but the delightful sound is almost immediately cut off by a sharp groan that splinters upward from the base of her throat. He yanks backwards, alarmed, to find her face twisted into a pained grimace. “Amy?” He says sharply, hands tightly gripping her upper arms. Her hands have dropped from his back and are now pressed against her left side, just above her hip.

“It’s fine,” she says tightly, eyes screwed shut. “It just hurts a little to laugh, is all. I promise, I’m fine.”

He’s not convinced, but her grimace fades pretty quickly and it’s replaced by a shy look of wonder that makes it very hard to concentrate on being worried. “You should sit,” he says as he gestures to the couch, hoping he sounds disapproving enough to cover the fact that his heart is doing somersaults in his chest. “Actually, shouldn’t you be in bed? I’m pretty sure the nurse said you’re supposed to be on bedrest for at  _ least _ another week and you’re  _ definitely  _ not supposed to be on your feet for longer than ten minutes at a time -”

“I’ve been laying down for two-and-a-half weeks, just let me sit here and eat shitty takeout and watch TV with you for a few hours,” she interrupts, and it’s suddenly very tempting to chuckle at the familiar disgruntled look on her face. As it is, he grins broadly, and then leans forward to gently kiss her forehead.

“Do you need help?” He asks as he steps back, and she responds with a roll of her eyes. He waits, tensed, watching her ease herself down onto the couch by using the armrest as leverage, ready to grab her should she lose her balance. Her face is set to a determinedly blank mask, but he sees the faintest wince crack across that mask the moment she makes contact with the couch cushion.

It only takes a few minutes after that to get her food pulled out of the bag and set up on one of her TV trays, which he balances carefully over her lap. He can feel her watching him as he quickly sets up his own tray, and when he turns back toward her with his tray in his hands, she’s got a piece of chicken between her chopsticks and a soft smile on her face.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she says as he settles down beside her, so close that the edges of their trays touch. He wants to say something smooth, like  _ there’s nowhere else I’d rather be _ or some other cool James Bond line, but then she’s grinning at him through a mouthful of chicken and suddenly it’s like they’re at their desks again, working late on yet another case. He’s giddy all of a sudden, a laugh bubbling up his throat, and Amy snorts around her chicken.

“I’m glad you’re here, too,” he tells her once he’s sobered a little. “Do you need anything? Like a blanket or a fork or - anything?”

“I’m good -”

“What about socks? I know your feet get cold, I could get socks. Or a jacket? Or the quilt at the top of your closet, that one’s really warm -”

“Wait,” she interrupts, the chopsticks falling from her fingers to clatter against her TV tray, “how do know about the quilt?”

He freezes, his mouth suddenly bone-dry. “I - I found it. When I was over here watering your plants, like you asked me to.”

“There are no plants in my  _ closet _ . And the quilt was hidden behind, like,  _ three boxes _ full of my childhood stuff.” He swallows hard and stares down at his sweet and sour chicken, hoping a viable excuse will come seeping out with the steam still rising from his takeout box. “Jake,” Amy says firmly. “Why were you in my closet?”

He clears his throat, pauses, and then clears it again. “I...missed you,” he mumbles. “I just...wanted to...to feel you again. So I...kinda…” he trails, and then her hand closes around his forearm and squeezes gently in a silent encouragement. “I’ve kind of been living here.”

She doesn’t look all that shocked. “I kinda figured. It smelled...well, it smelled like you in here. In a good way,” she adds quickly as his face heats up. “How long?”

“For the last two or three months,” he mumbles.

Her shock is palpable now, even if he refuses to look at her face. “ _ Months _ ?” She repeats in a whisper.

“I couldn’t go back to my place after - after,” he says, embarrassed. “And I didn’t want anyone to be able to find me once word got out -”

“Wait, wait, once word got out about  _ what? _ ” He feels his face heat up, and she gasps. “They  _ know _ ?”

“Of  _ course  _ they know,  _ everyone  _ knows, Charles almost  _ cried _ when he found out.” Jake mutters.

“Why the  _ hell _ did you tell people?” She cries.

“I was  _ devastated  _ when you left, Amy.” He snaps, and her face falls. “I didn’t  _ tell  _ anyone. They figured it out just by  _ looking  _ at me. Also, Gina saw a hickey the morning after.” He stabs moodily at his rice, and from the corner of his eye he can see her face reddening. “I’m sorry, okay, I didn’t think about you not wanting people to know that we - that you and I -” he stops and bites out a sigh of frustration, running a hand through his hair. “I needed to talk to someone about what happened. I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

She stares at him for a beat, before grabbing her tray and lifting it up. She pauses after that, apparently only just then remembering that she can’t lean forward to put the tray on the ground, and curses softly. He moves his own tray down to the floor before reaching for hers, carefully avoiding eye-contact all the while. “Jake,” she says quietly once her tray is safely on the floor, “that’s not what I meant. You  _ know _ that’s not what I meant. I just - I’ve missed a  _ lot  _ over the last nine months, I need some time to adjust and catch up. It’s not because I’m ashamed of us, or of you. I was just  _ surprised _ ,” she reaches out and grabs his forearm, running her thumb over the outside ridge comfortingly, and he finally allows himself to look at her. “I mean, I wish  _ we’d  _ had a chance to - to talk, before -” she stops and shakes her head. “Look, I would have done the same thing if the roles were reversed. I wanted to talk to someone about us  _ so badly _ , but - but I was  _ alone  _ for nine months, and after awhile I realized that the  _ only  _ person I wanted to talk to about that is  _ you _ .”

He inhales sharply. “Really?” He asks quietly, and she squeezes his arm when she nods. He’s on his knees on the cushion beside her then, leaned heavily across her, one hand bracing his weight against the armrest to her left while the other gently drifts across the side of her face. The kiss is long and unhurried, lingering and soft, a warm pressure that is somehow comfortably familiar and electrifyingly foreign all at once. He feels her chest hitch down near his elbow just slightly, and then she buries her fingers in his hair and releases a long, slow, tension-draining sigh that warms the side of his face up. She hums quietly when he finally pulls away, and her eyes are still closed when he tilts his forehead down to rest against hers. “You’re not alone,” he reminds her quietly, and her eyelids flutter open. “Never again.”

It’s hard to go back to eating Chinese takeout after such a simple, earth-shattering promise, but they manage with a brief squeeze of their interlocked fingers and few shy smiles poorly hidden around wontons and dumplings.

(He doesn’t know it yet, but he’ll never break that promise.)

* * *

Charles’ grandmother once warned him about visiting people he hasn’t seen in awhile.  _ Something about them will have changed _ , she’d said,  _ and more often than not the change is so big that they won’t be the same person anymore. _

She’d said it to him the first time he went to visit her in her retirement home, and she’d said it because she wanted him to go away (she always  _ did _ make him cry a lot), but it’s stuck with him for all these years. He can’t help but hear the echo of them now, standing on Amy’s welcome mat just one week after she’d been released from the hospital, hesitating only for a moment before knocking on her front door.

He shifts back an inch or two when he hears footsteps approaching on the other side of the door, and then the lock disengages and the door swings open and he’s met by the sight of his best friend in a t-shirt and sweatpants. “Charles!” Jake says brightly, and Charles wants to  _ cry _ \- of  _ course _ Jake is here, of  _ course _ he’s with Amy. “What’s up, buddy?”

Charles laughs, partly out of nervousness, partly out of excitement. “It’s my day off,” he says gleefully as Jake furrows his brow, “and I thought I’d come by and see how Amy’s doing.”

“Oh, yeah, she’s good! She’s in the living room right now, actually, do you - d’you wanna come in?” Jake steps backwards and gestures inside, and Charles follows his lead. “You’re actually the first person from the Nine-Nine to come by since she got out of the hospital,” Jake tells him as he pads through the entryway on socked feet. “Second person overall. Her friend Kylie was here yesterday and stayed for awhile.”

“Who was at the door?” Charles hears Amy call from the living room. Jake steps out from around the corner and then gestures to Charles, and Amy’s whole face lights up from where she sits curled up on the couch. “Charles!” She says as she carefully unfolds her legs.

Both he and Jake lurch toward her when she rocks forward, but she’s already on her feet before Jake can get a solid grip on her arm. She bats his hands away (playfully, Charles thinks) and then she’s flung her arms around Charles’ neck and seems to be trying to squeeze the life out of him. He hugs her back carefully, keeping track all the while of the way Jake seems to be hovering over Amy’s shoulder, ready at a moment’s notice to pull her out of harm’s way.

“How’ve you been?” She asks when she leans away.

“Great! God, Amy, you look so much better,” she smiles, a healthy blush blooming in her cheeks. “I’m serious, you look - you almost look like you did before you left.”

“Still too thin.” Jake says as he backs toward the kitchen, meeting the withering glare Amy shoots his way with a cheeky half-grin.

“But she has all her color back! She was pale as a sheet in the hospital.” Charles calls.

Jake’s eyes widen and he points at Charles, nodding enthusiastically, and Amy sighs. “You guys are idiots.” She mutters, and Charles grins.

Because she says it exactly the same way she always does.

He ends up on the couch with Amy, filling her in on the case the two of them were working together before she went undercover while listening to Jake make lunch in the kitchen. “It ended up being the downstairs neighbor,” Charles says, and she throws her head back when she barks out a laugh.

“I  _ knew it _ ! He was  _ way  _ too interested in which family member would be coming by to clean out the apartment.”

“Yeah, Rosa actually ended up finding him out on the fire escape trying to pop the windowpane out of place. We almost didn’t get him, though,” Amy’s brow furrows slightly. “The Vulture almost lost the paperwork.”

Charles hears Jake make a noise - a short retch - just as Amy’s face twists in disgust. “Screw that guy!” Jake says loudly. “He got  _ exactly _ what he deserved!”

“What exactly happened with that? I mean, Jake kind of told me right when I first woke up, but I still don’t know the whole story. Wuntch  _ fired  _ him?”

“Right there in the ER waiting room, yeah,” Charles nods. “It was crazy. She came storming in right as he was trying to fire Jake -”

“Wait,  _ what _ ?” Amy interrupts sharply. Charles hesitates, and then turns back toward the kitchen, where Jake’s head has just appeared in the doorway. He’s biting his lip guiltily. “You didn’t tell me he was trying to  _ fire _ you!”

“It...didn’t seem important?”

“It didn’t work, either, since Wuntch came in and fired him on the spot,” Charles says quickly. Amy still looks moderately furious, but she sinks backwards into the couch, some of the tension in her shoulders draining. “It wasn’t all  _ that _ surprising, actually, considering Jake had just  _ punched _ him -”

“ _ What _ ?”

“Maybe  _ I  _ should tell the story?” Jake says loudly as he emerges from the kitchen with three plates weight down with sandwiches. He shoots Charles a warning look while his back is turned toward Amy before fixing a bright, calming smile on his face just before he turns toward her.

“You punched the Vulture?” She practically deadpans as she takes the plate from his hand.

“He almost got you killed.” Jake says, and there’s something about his tone that dares her to argue the point with him. Something flickers in the recesses of her gaze - guilt, maybe, but Charles can’t be sure. “He deserved a lot worse. I would’ve punched him again if Diaz hadn’t pulled me off of him.”

Jake sits then, in the armchair near Amy’s end of the couch, looking only mildly apologetic over his own determination. “He totally had it coming, Amy,” Charles reassures her. “Captain Holt wasn’t even mad.”

She’s quiet, staring down at her sandwich thoughtfully, before she seems to perk up a little. “So...now that the Vulture is gone, are they...is Captain Holt...coming back?”

Charles exchanges a glance with Jake. “Well...on paper, his promotion was totally separate from the Vulture’s,” Charles says.

“They’ve been interviewing candidates all week,” Jake says softly.

A look of anguish ignites on Amy’s face. “Well - well, who’s acting captain?”

“Terry.”

“Can’t he repromote you?” She’s turned toward Jake now.

Jake glances down at his plate and sighs. “Acting captains don’t have hiring or firing power. That includes promotions and demotions. The only person who can do that right now is Wuntch, but she’s under investigation by Internal Affairs and...can’t.”

Amy stares at him a moment longer, before turning her helpless gaze toward Charles. “There has to be something we can do,” she says earnestly.

Charles shakes his head sadly. “Until they appoint a new captain for the Nine-Nine, we’re...kinda stuck.”

“It’s okay,” Jake says, and his smile is genuinely reassuring. “Terry’s letting me take all the sick days and vacation days I have stored up to stay with you until you’re a little closer to healed. And hopefully by the time you’re cleared to come back to work, we’ll have a new captain and I’ll be on my way toward a promotion.”

Amy nods slowly, chewing the inside of her cheek, and returns her attention to her sandwich. “It’ll work itself back out eventually,” Charles says to the quiet living room. “The universe recognizes good people. That’s what Gina always says.”

Jake snorts. “Gina also says you’re only good if you know your angles.”

Charles laughs, and even Amy releases a half-hearted chuckle, but her gaze is a thousand miles away. There’s a thoughtfulness about her that suddenly has Charles recalling every late night spent before a corkboard, evidence and crime scene photos spread before her, the metaphorical gears in her mind spinning in a blur.

It’s the look she gets when she’s on the cusp of piecing things together, when she’s just moments away from solving a mystery. Jake starts detailing the look on the Vulture’s face in the moments after Wuntch told him he was fired, and Amy nods and smiles in all the right places, but Charles does what he does best when Amy gets like this:

He sits quietly and waits to see what will happen next.

* * *

Rosa’s never really been one to sit around waiting on a solution to her problems.

She’s more of a  _ fix it and fix it now and if you can’t fix it find someone who can _ kind of woman. It’s this exact quality that catapulted her into her position as a detective (well mostly it was because she didn’t want to risk sitting around waiting on backup when the leader of the prostitution ring she’d been following for weeks was sprinting right past her toward freedom - the correct verbiage would be that she’d  _ clothespinned _ herself into a detective’s position, but, you know. Details). It’s a sort of forwardness, a borderline-irrational blind determination, that makes her both intimidating and formidable.

Waiting on someone else to fix her problems is such a foreign sensation to her. It grates against her very way of living, tearing at every instinct within her, upsetting her entire world and throwing it into a hazy uncertainty that, frankly, pisses her off to no end.

Which is why she finds herself  _ seething  _ in the driver’s seat of her car, parked by the curb across the street from Amy Santiago’s apartment.

She’s supposed to wait until Peralta leaves for his first day back at work before she gets out of the car. He’s not supposed to know she’s there - it’s all part of some top-secret plan Santiago recruited her for almost two weeks previously. He’s taking his damn time, which is actually very in-line with everything she knows about him, but is still aggravating her already-peaking annoyance. It’s not enough that Santiago demanded she be here by 8 on her day off; no,  _ now _ she has to sit and wait for Peralta to drag his ass up to the precinct.

He doesn’t emerge until 8:03, looking properly miserable in his clean-pressed dress blues. He’s so absorbed in his own train of thought that he doesn’t even notice her across the street; still, she waits until he’s in his car and at the end of the street before she gets out.

She heaves a sigh once she’s outside Santiago’s door, hoping her impatience is audible through the wood. She knocks, and hears “coming!” from somewhere inside. Footsteps approach the door quickly, and then the door swings open, and Rosa’s gaze drops two inches to meet Amy’s eyeline.

She’s not wearing any shoes yet, but other than that she appears to be completely dressed. “Thank you so much for agreeing to do this,” she says, turning back into her apartment. Rosa steps inside after her and closes the door, catching the faintest whiff of bacon still hanging in the air. “I’m almost ready!” Amy calls from her bedroom.

“Yeah, where am I taking you?”

“I have a meeting with Chief Garmin in half an hour.”

Rosa freezes, brows shooting upward. “ _ Garmin _ ?” She repeats, incredulous. She hears heels clicking against the hardwood floor, and then Amy reemerges from her bedroom, a grim look on her face visible around her arm, crossed before her to fix an earring. “What the hell are you meeting with him about?”

“The Nine-Nine,” she says, like it’s the most obvious answer in the world. “Well, I told him it was because I had questions about my return to the squad since so much has changed lately. But that’s only... _ loosely _ true.”

Rosa arches an eyebrow and waits.

“Look, Holt got this crappy promotion,  _ obviously _ as Wuntch’s ploy to get rid of him, and then Jake got unfairly demoted, and now Wuntch can’t fix any of it, so... _ I’m _ gonna fix it.”

Amy starts casting around her living room, looking for something, and Rosa tilts her head back slightly. “How?”

Amy pauses and shoots Rosa an overly-innocent look. “Well, I haven’t talked to the press about what happened in that botched shootout yet,” she says, “and I know they’ll be really interested to hear what I have to say about the NYPD leadership.”

She smiles, and Rosa feels every last ounce of irritation from the morning evaporate instantly. “Being in a mob  _ changed _ you, Santiago.” She chortles. Amy finds what she’s looking for - her cell phone - and when she turns back toward Rosa her grin is smug. “I like it.”

“Will you please drive me to One Police Plaza so I can vaguely blackmail our superior officer?”

“On one condition. I get to sit in on the meeting.”

“Well how else am I supposed to intimidate him?”

Rosa grins, and shakes Amy’s outstretched hand.

They end up arriving ten minutes early. It doesn’t matter, though, for the moment the receptionist announces their arrival through the intercom, Garmin’s office doors fly open, revealing the man himself. “Detective Santiago!” He booms, and Amy strides forward surprisingly quickly to shake his hand. “Good to see you on your feet! How’s the recovery going?”

“Quite well, sir,” Amy says, a warm and convincing smile on her face. Rosa works very hard not to roll her eyes. “Thank you for agreeing to meet with me on such short notice.”

“Not a problem at all, my dear. In fact, I’m  _ glad _ you called this meeting. I’ve been wanting to have a chat ever since - well, since you came home.” Rosa can tell by the set of Amy’s shoulders that her smile has gone tight and tense. “Please, come on in. Detective Diaz, will you be joining us?”

“Yes.” Rosa says shortly, following Amy into the room. She keeps pace behind her until Amy’s coat is draped over the back of one guest chair and she’s eased herself down onto the cushion; after that, she merely stands a pace or two behind her, hands crossed behind her back, face set in a cool, emotionless mask.

“Well, I know you called this meeting with some questions in mind, Detective, but I’d like to share some news first, if you don’t mind.” Garmin says as he reclaims his seat.

“Go ahead.”

“The NYPD would like to formally recognize the incredible bravery, integrity, and determination you displayed while you were undercover by awarding you a Medal of Honor.” Rosa sees more than she hears Amy’s sharp intake of breath, and for a moment, she really thinks Amy might balk. “We’d like to plan the ceremony to happen before you’re cleared to go back to work. We can work out a specific date before we adjourn this meeting, if you’d like. The press will be there, obviously, and we’re hoping to have a new captain assigned to the Nine-Nine who will give a short speech and award you that medal. But if worse comes to worst and we haven’t quite gotten to that stage in the hiring process, I’ll be the one to do those things at the ceremony.”

He pauses, waiting for a reaction, and Rosa swallows. “Th-thank you, sir,” Amy stammers. A pleased grin flickers on Garmin’s face, and Rosa very much wants to bang her head against the wall. “Is it - may I ask my questions now?”

“Go right ahead, detective.”

Amy’s shoulders rise and fall as she takes in a steadying breath, and Rosa clenches her jaw. “It - it actually has to do with replacing Captain Pembroke.” Rosa coughs quietly to cover the involuntary retching noise at the sound -  _ Captain Pembroke _ , what a joke - and luckily, Garmin appears not to have noticed. “I understand that you’re currently in the process of interviewing prospective replacements.” Amy presses, voice growing ever stronger with her ascending confidence.

“We are,” Garmin confirms. “It’s a slower process than before, since Chief Wuntch is currently under investigation and cannot take part in the interviews. I’m actually overseeing it in the meantime.”

“So, ultimately, the decision is yours.”

“That is correct.”

Amy nods, and Rosa holds her breath. “It should be Captain Ray Holt.”

The pause that follows Amy’s statement is billowing, pregnant, and piercing. Garmin leans back slightly, the shock waves working through his face in flashes. “Ray Holt - the captain of the Public Relations department?” Garmin clarifies.

“Yes.”

“Well that - that would be a _demotion_ for him -”

“No, it wouldn’t. The one thing Captain Holt wanted more than anything else in the world was his own command. Chief Wuntch promoted him out of spite, and - and I think she’d be willing to admit that if you asked her. Captain Holt should be in command of the Nine-Nine.”

“Detective Santiago -”

“Sir, with all due respect, I don’t know that I feel comfortable returning to a precinct whose captain does not know me.” Amy interrupts, and Rosa wants to bellow her excitement. “The only reason I was sent undercover  _ at all _ was because Captain Holt was forcibly removed from the precinct. Captain Dozerman hadn’t known me longer than sixty seconds before he chose me for the assignment. And I think it’s been proven that the other hiring decisions Chief Wuntch made at that time were not done with the needs of the Nine-Nine in mind.”

Rosa works hard to fight the grin threatening to curl the corners of her mouth upward. Garmin looks utterly perplexed, leaned back in his seat, staring at Amy without really appearing to see her. “Let me be sure that I understand you,  _ detective _ .” Garmin says slowly. Rosa feels her heart stutter, just for a moment. Amy straightens up even further in her seat. “You’re asking me to demote Ray Holt back down to precinct captain, or you’ll refuse to return to work?”

“Again, with all  _ due _ respect, those were not the words I used. I  _ am _  uncomfortable returning to a precinct that has been so thoroughly ravaged by poor leadership - both on the part of the previous captain, and on that captain’s superior officer. And I’m certain that certain members of the press would be  _ very _  keenly interested in my opinion on the matter, all things considered.”

She leans backwards a degree, and Rosa sees her arms move just slightly. Garmin’s gaze flicks down to Amy’s left side, and Rosa realizes a beat later that Amy’s just gestured to the gunshot wound.

Garmin clenches his jaw. “I don’t take kindly to threats, detective.”

Rosa takes a step forward. “I don’t recall threatening you, Chief Garmin.” Amy says coolly.

Garmin glares at her, before heaving an overly-dramatic sigh and reaching for his phone. He lifts the receiver and presses a button on the keypad, pauses, and then says: “Laura, get Sergeant Jeffords of the Nine-Nine on the phone.”

Rosa closes the distance between her and Amy, squeezing Amy’s right shoulder with her left hand briefly. Amy leans backwards just slightly, almost into Rosa, and Rosa grins.

A moment later, Garmin hits another button on his phone and places the handpiece back on the receiver. “Jeffords?” Garmin calls.

“Yes, chief?” Comes Terry’s voice from the tinny speaker on the desk phone.

“I need you down here right away.” Garmin glances up at Amy before he speaks his next words. “Something’s come up.”

“Y-yes, sir, right away, sir.”

“Please see yourselves out into the lobby while we wait.” Garmin says once he’s hung up on Terry.

Rosa waits until Amy’s eased herself up before leading her back out into the lobby, one hand hovering over her lower back. “That was  _ so  _ badass,” Rosa mutters once they’re outside.

“I think I’m gonna puke,” Amy whispers, panicked.

Rosa leads Amy to an empty chair against the wall opposite of Garmin’s office doors, offering a hand when Amy’s hands flutter over the lack of armrests. Amy takes it and, with a small, grateful smile, eases herself down.

“D’you think it worked?” Amy asks quietly once Rosa’s seated beside her.

“I don’t know. I think so. I hope so.” She turns away, down the hall they’d originally come through, wishing Terry’s towering form would come lumbering around the corner. “Why didn’t you say anything about Jake while you were in there?”

“Honestly? I panicked. But if this works, I’m, like, ninety-nine percent sure the first thing Holt’ll do as captain is promote Jake back up to detective, so it doesn’t really matter.” Amy swallows thickly, new tendrils of panic appearing to constrict around her heart. “Should I have said something? Oh, God, he’s gonna think I didn’t care about the demotion, isn’t he?”

“Chill.” Rosa says firmly, and Amy clenches her jaw shut. “Bringing him up too probably would’ve been overkill. It might have cost you the whole thing. You did the right thing. And you’re right, Holt’s totally gonna promote him back to detective first thing.”

Amy nods slowly, looking marginally more convinced.

It takes twenty minutes for Terry to get from the precinct to One Police Plaza, by which time Amy’s stress levels have reduced by approximately twelve percent. Amy spots Terry before Rosa does, prompting her to lean forward sharply in her seat, which in turn sends a sharp pain through her injured side. “What the hell is wrong with you?” Rosa growls as Terry gets closer.

“Amy? Rosa?” Terry calls before Amy can answer. Rosa pulls Amy carefully to her feet and then steps back, watching Terry envelope Amy in a gentle hug. “What’s going on? Do you guys know why Garmin called me down here?”

“Actually, yeah -”

Before Amy can finish, Garmin’s office doors fly open. Rosa merely crosses her arms over her chest and raised a single, unimpressed brow. Amy and Terry both turn toward him, Terry jumping to attention, Amy looking like she’s trying to decide if she should slink away and cower behind a potted plant or return his glare and stand her ground. “Sergeant Jeffords,” Garmin says, and from the corner of her eye Rosa sees Amy’s chest puff out a bit. “Will you please join us in my office?”

“Yes, sir.” Terry says stiffly. This time, Rosa does roll her eyes.

They all file inside, Amy and Rosa taking up their previous places while Terry stands to Amy’s right, looking supremely uncomfortable. Garmin takes his time once he’s seated, shuffling a few papers around on his desk and clicking at his laptop. Rosa bites back an impatient sigh.

“Thank you for getting down here so quickly, sergeant.” Garmin finally says. Terry nods, clearly too nervous to actually speak. “I’d like to start by thanking you for being so patient and flexible over the course of the last few months. I know your precinct has undergone quite a bit of turmoil, the latest - though, certainly not the greatest - being the lack of a captain. Thank you for stepping up in the interim and for maintaining morale among the officers.”

“Of course, sir,” Terry says, sounding uncertain.

“I called you down here today because we’ve finally managed to locate a suitable replacement for Captain Pembroke.” Garmin casts a glance toward Amy and Rosa, before fixing his gaze on Terry. “We’ve sent an official offer to Captain Raymond Holt, and as of two minutes ago, he has accepted.”

Rosa can’t help it - she grins. Amy’s beaming when she twists backwards in her seat, and Terry lets out a whoop of laughter. “Are you - are you  _ serious _ ?” He asks gleefully.

“He’s on his way up now to sort of the details and to sign the paperwork to make the transition back official, but yes. I’m quite serious.” The ghost of a smile twitches across Garmin’s face, but he remains otherwise unruffled. “Thank you for your service. Your willingness to step up will be carefully noted in your file, sergeant.”


	17. try to take what's lost and broke and make it right (b)

When Ray woke up that morning, the absolute last thing he expected was a demotion.

Hot coffee, yes. Cheddar yapping at the cat sitting in the window of the house next door, yes. An email from Kevin detailing the French Riviera, yes. The usual hush that falls over the officers in PR that precedes him in his initial entrance to the wing every morning, yes.

But a demotion? Not even slightly.

What’s most fascinating is the immediate emotional response welling up somewhere between his stomach and his spleen. The joy - pure and unbridled, swelling and expanding uncomfortably in his chest - upon hearing those words.

“ _ I’d like to reinstate you as Captain of the Nine-Nine, _ ” Garmin had said over the phone. “ _ In light of recent events, PR no longer seems like the right fit for your abilities. _ ”

Ray never expected a demotion, but more than that, he never expected to be  _ happy  _ about it.

And yet, as he makes the two floor descent toward Garmin’s office, he walks with a distinct spring in his step.

Laura, Garmin’s receptionist, tells him to just walk on in, but Ray knocks out of respect anyways. A beat passes, and then the door opens, and he’s greeted by none other than Terry Jeffords.

“Captain,” Terry says, clearly barely restraining himself even as he yanks Ray into a brief hug. He claps Ray’s shoulders a few times, hard enough that Ray almost feels like his brain is rattling in his skull, before he steps aside and ushers Ray inside. Garmin is seated behind his desk, looking irritated; it only takes one glance to Ray’s left to discover why.

Diaz and Santiago are here, too, Diaz’s smirk cool and unaffected, which directly contradicts Amy’s beaming smile. “Detectives?” He asks, sounding just as winded as he feels.

Santiago glances back at Diaz, who steps forward and assists in getting Santiago to her feet. “Captain,” Santiago says, her hand extended toward him.

He stares at her hand for a beat, before turning back to Garmin. “You have her to thank for this change in position, Captain.” Garmin says, his annoyance no longer vague.

Ray turns back toward Santiago, feeling the beginnings of a slow smile tingling in his cheeks. There’s a degree of guilt somewhere in the backs of her eyes, but she’s smiling, smug, accomplished. Ray nods, and then pushes her hand away before stepping toward her and drawing her in for a hug. Garmin clears his throat pointedly and she’s stiff against him, shocked, and when he steps away her eyes are as wide as saucers. “Thank you, Amy.” He says quietly.

Tears spring up in her eyes instantaneously.

“There’s no need to redo your training, Captain,” Garmin says before Amy can formulate a response. Ray turns toward him just as he slides a paper and pen toward him. “Just sign right down there on the dotted line.”

Ray glances over his shoulder at Amy and Diaz, and then over his other at Terry, before stepping forward and grabbing the pen.

“Congratulations, Captain.” Garmin says as Ray crosses the T in his last name. “You’re officially the commanding officer of the Ninety-Ninth Precinct in Brooklyn.” He takes the paper and tucks it into a manilla folder, oblivious to the triumph ringing through the room. “I’m not sure how up-to-date you are on the current state of the precinct, but there is an unoccupied detective’s position. I suggest you make finding a replacement your highest priority.”

Ray smiles. “I believe I already have a candidate in mind.”

* * *

Jake can’t get Amy to answer her phone.

He’s trying hard not to panic because of it - she’s been really bad about putting the phone on silent lately, since apparently that’s what setting her phone was always on while she was undercover - but it’s getting increasingly hard  _ not _ to panic. He’d made her swear to keep her phone on her before he left that morning. Mental images of her unconscious on the floor in her bathroom or in the kitchen keep flashing through his mind; he has to glare down at her nine-months-old note still taped to his dashboard to keep from abandoning his patrol to fly to her apartment with the sirens screaming.

In all likelihood, she’s fine.

Still, Jake feels an ulcer forming in his gut.

“ _ Peralta, do you copy? Over _ .” A voice emits from his radio.

Jake sighs as he pulls the radio off the hook on his shoulder. “I copy, over.” He says into the little receiver.

“ _ Come back to the precinct, over _ .”

He furrows his brow. “Why? Over.”

“ _ Captain’s orders, over _ .”

He frowns, but still: “Copy that.”

Maybe whatever Terry has for him will be enough to distract him from the whole Amy not answering her phone thing. Logically, he knows it’s impossible - he’s been thinking about Amy pretty much constantly for over nine months now - but whatever it is that Terry needs will hopefully kill enough time that Jake can get away with sneaking over to Amy’s apartment after he leaves.

Something’s off when he steps through the front door. He can’t quite put his finger on the change, but it’s like something in the air has shifted. There’s an electricity now, a tension, that Jake just doesn’t understand. Stevens, the officer who runs the radio, looks up at him when he approaches the front desk. “Captain’s office.” He says, giving nothing away.

Jake starts toward the elevator, trying to ignore the little niggling  _ something _ telling him that something is off. All he has to do is make it through this meeting, and then he can see Amy again.

He hopes she’ll be at least half as desperate to see him again as he is to see her.

The fourth floor is, for the most part, completely unchanged. His gaze catches on the two empty desks near Gina’s area of course, and he feels a familiar pang deep down in his chest, but he shakes it off pretty quickly - they won’t be empty for long. Amy will be back soon and he’ll earn his way back up here, and this time around it’ll be even better than before.

The Captain’s office door is closed and the blinds are drawn, but the door opens as soon as Jake pushes through the bullpen gate. Terry emerges, a calm, knowing smile on his face, and waves Jake forward. “Hey, come meet the new captain.” Terry calls.

“ _ New _ captain? They finally found a replacement for Pembroke?”

Terry nods, that stupid grin still plastered across his face. “Yeah, and I’ve been talking to him about the empty detective position. He wants to talk to you.”

Jake’s heart skips a beat, and he crosses the rest of the distance quickly. Terry gives him a moment to square his shoulders before stepping back into the office, shuffling backwards and to the side, allowing Jake a glimpse inside.

Amy’s the first person he sees. She’s standing next to the captain’s desk, smirking at him, her phone clutched in her hand. Jake releases a nervous laugh on instinct, his question on the tip of his tongue, but then his gaze drops down to the man behind the desk and his blood seems to freeze in his veins.

“Peralta.” Holt says coolly. “How kind of you to finally join us.”

Jake blinks.

“As I know you’re already aware, the Nine-Nine is down a detective. Well, two detectives, but Detective Santiago here will be rejoining us in a matter of weeks now.” Holt shoots a glance at Amy, and Amy’s broadened grin tells Jake that she’s in on whatever is happening here. “All of this to say, Captain Jeffords here has told me all about the exemplary work you’ve done over the course of the last nine months. I would be honored to offer you a position as a detective for the Nine-Nine.”

Jake can’t help it - he stumbles back a step. The edge of Holt’s couch hits the back of his knee and he falls backwards into it, landing with a heavy huff next to Rosa, who leans away from him, grinning. “Are you - are you for real?” He chokes.

“I am.” Holt says calmly.

“How - how are - how is this -  _ how _ ?”

“Detective Santiago can be quite convincing when she needs to be.” Holt says simply, and Amy looks ready to blast off with the force of her pride. “Chief Garmin reinstated me as captain an hour ago, and my first priority was to fill the vacant detective position, which I am accomplishing right now.”

Jake manages to turn his gaze to Amy. “You did this?” He asks, voice soft with wonder. She nods, and suddenly her smile adapts a shy quality. “I -” he chokes out a laugh. His hands rise and then fall heavily against his legs, and he surprises himself when he feels tears springing up in his eyes. “You’re everything.” He says haltingly.

Her smile has mostly fallen, replaced by tender concern, and suddenly he forgets that he’s in Holt’s office ( _ Holt’s office! _ ) and surrounded by people. He stands and basically flies at her, taking just enough care to not slam her back against the shelves behind Holt’s desk before he kisses her. Her little noise of surprise buzzes against his lips but her hands come up to loosely grip his elbows - probably to push him away if he goes on like that for too long.

He doesn’t. He pulls away a moment later, taking one last moment to gently bump his forehead against hers before pulling back to slowly shake his head at her. “I had to fix things,” she murmurs when she meets his gaze.

He wants to tell her that she didn’t have to fix anything - that the implication that she was the reason things needed fixing to begin with is so beyond wrong - but Holt cuts in before Jake has the chance. “Officer Peralta,” he says, kindly, but firmly, and Jake does a poor job of repressing his broad grin as he steps away from Amy and salutes Holt. “Do you accept the offer?”

“Can I have my own office?”

“No.”

“Can the Nine-Nine pay to have my car repaired?”

“No.”

“You haven’t fixed that thing yet?” Rosa interjects.

“Can I have whatever I want out of the vending machines whenever I want it?”

“ _ Jake _ -”

“No.”

“Will you at least buy me a soda?”

Holt leans backwards, considering. “Alright.”

Jake grins over the sounds of Amy’s disgruntled muttering and Rosa’s amused snort. “You’ve got yourself a deal, Captain.” Jake says, leaning over the desk to shake Holt’s hand.

Holt flashes him a brief, rare smile. “Welcome back, detective.”

* * *

Contrary to whatever his mother is probably out there saying about him, this is the first time Vinny has ever been arrested. He may have spent the better part of the last few years partaking in some pretty unsavory acts, but he’s always been careful, always taken precautions, always managed to evade arrest. In fact, it’s not even really  _ his fault _ that he got caught. The fault lies with the person in the cell next to him, who he can see lounging on his bunk through the bars between them.

It is  _ not  _ Doug Judy’s first time in jail.

That much is obvious to passing officers, whose uninterested gazes slide from Judy, currently whistling a cheerful tune, to Vinny, who’s perched on the furthest edge of his bunk, elbows on his knees, staring at the floor. The juxtaposition might be funny to someone who doesn’t know them or what they’ve just come out of, someone who doesn’t know where they’re from or why they’re here.

The only person on earth who could fully understand just how dreadful this whole thing has become is miles away in New York; Vinny realizes he still doesn’t even know if she’s dead or alive, and it sinks down into the pit of his stomach like a stone.

Doug told him that her name is Amy Santiago once they’d reached a nondescript motel somewhere near the coast of Connecticut. And the guy he’d seen her with - the alley cop - was some dude named Jake Peralta, who was apparently her partner before she was sent undercover. Doug goes on about him for awhile, but after a few seconds it all sort of becomes white noise in Vinny’s ears.

He misses her.

They managed to stay hidden for nearly two months, but apparently one of the other motel guests recognized Doug, because they woke up at three o’clock that morning to the sounds of fists pounding at their door and voices shouting to be let in.

They were arrested and taken in, booked at some tiny station, and they’ve been in the holding cells ever since.

The police captain is a portly little man who not only has no apparent idea who either one of them are (all he seems to know is that there’s a warrant out for Doug’s arrest in Florida, of all places, and that Vinny is wanted in New York state for questioning), but seems to relish in the fact that his officers made an arrest. He’s stopped by at least twice already just to lean back against the monitor’s desk, looking between the two of them. Doug tried to engage the guy in conversation each time, but aside from a few belly-laughs that seem eerily disconnected from the things Doug says, he stays quiet. Looking.

Watching.

Vinny misses Amy.

“Don’t worry, man,” Doug hisses. Vinny forces his head up to meet Doug’s gaze. “They’ll have to let you go if they can’t get a warrant. You’re good as gold, my man.”

Vinny clenches his jaw. “I’m wanted in New York, Judy.” He spits.

“For questioning! That ain’t the same thing as an arrest warrant. I bet that’s just Peralta’s way of tryin’ to find you. Don’t worry about it, man, you’re good. I swear, you’re good.”

Vinny very much wants to argue, but he can hear voices approaching from the front of the precinct, so all he does is glare at Doug as he straightens up on his bunk. It sounds like two different voices, growing closer all the while. The second one rings with anger, sharp and abrasive, and Vinny winces as the swinging door separating the holding wing from the front of the precinct bangs open to reveal the owner of that voice - the police captain, who appears to be arguing with someone who looks vaguely familiar, clutching a file tightly in his right hand.

“You’ve got no authority, no  _ jurisdiction _ -”

“You’re right,” the guy says, thrusting the file folder toward the captain, “but the FBI does.”

Doug lets out a whoop, suddenly on his feet in his cell. “I  _ knew _ you was gonna come through, Peralta!” He half-shouts, and Vinny’s heart shoots up into his throat.

Peralta grins, nodding, before returning his attention back to the captain. “If you don’t mind,  _ Captain _ .”

The captain splutters, red-faced and furious, and even though Peralta’s grin is smug, Vinny isn’t sure if he wants to laugh or cry.

Ten minutes later, he’s sitting handcuffed in the back seat of Peralta’s mustang with Judy at his side, that damned precinct shrinking in the rear-view mirror. “Sorry ‘bout the cuffs, guys,” Peralta says, glancing at them briefly in the mirror before returning his gaze to the road. “It’s mostly for looks. I gotta wait ‘til we -”

“Yeah, yeah, we don’t care - what happened to Amy?” Doug interrupts.

Peralta shoots a glance at them through the rear view mirror, and Vinny sees the well-worn laugh lines around the corners of Peralta’s eyes deepen as he smiles. “She made it. She’s alright.” Hazy relief floods Vinny’s system just as Doug basically melts in his seat, head falling back to land against the headrest, tension completely and totally gone. “They released her from the hospital a few weeks ago. She’ll be cleared to go back to work here pretty soon, actually.”

“She’s alive,” Vinny says, and his voice is small and a little hoarse. Peralta’s glance is a little longer this time, lingering on Vinny before flicking back down to the road.

“She’s alive and well.” Peralta confirms. “And she actually has no idea I’m doing this right now. I’m gonna surprise her.”

Doug whoops again, much louder now in the confined space, but Vinny finds that he just doesn’t care. “Can I keep my cuffs?” Doug asks excitedly, leaning forward in his seat to rest his face against the passenger’s seat.

Peralta pulls a face. “ _ No _ . Why the hell would you wanna  _ keep  _ them?”

“S’kinky.” Doug waggles his eyebrows suggestively, and Vinny sees Peralta mime gagging in the mirror.

“I’m still not sure if I should let you go when we get home, Judy, don’t test me.” Peralta snaps, but Vinny guesses by the grin on Doug’s face that this is typical banter between the two of them. “Vinny, you alright back there?”

Vinny opens his mouth to answer, but the words don’t come. Peralta glances up again, meeting Vinny’s gaze briefly, and Vinny manages to nod.

Peralta does not look convinced. When Vinny blinks, he sees that alley again, sees Amy pressed against the wall by this man, sees the way Peralta’s fingers had dug into her thigh when he’d reached to hitch her knee up higher over his hip.

It suddenly feels way too crowded in this car.

The feeling has mostly passed by the time they finally make it back to New York, even though Doug started singing five minutes into the drive and didn’t stop (regardless of how many times Peralta yelled at him). Vinny spent most of the ride in silence aside from the occasional snort at Doug and Peralta’s bickering; both Peralta and Doug seem to sense that he isn’t sure how to proceed.

Luckily, Peralta is apparently willing to take the first step. “Alright, Judy, you’re free to go  _ this time _ . But just so you know, since I bailed you out of jail in Connecticut, we’re  _ officially _ even. Next time I catch you, it’s for real.”

Judy scoffs as Peralta removes the cuffs from his wrists. “Boy, if you think I’m comin’ anywhere near here ever again, you got another thing comin’.” Doug’s already backing away, his gaze flickering between Jake and Vinny. “Vin, my dude - I’ll catch up with you again soon. You got my number, call me if you ever need anything!”

Vinny raises both hands to wave goodbye, and when he blinks, Doug’s gone, vanished into the foot traffic flooding the sidewalk outside the police precinct. And just like that, he’s alone with Jake Peralta.

“I actually wanted to talk to you a little before you left,” Peralta says, looking suddenly nervous. Vinny shifts his weight and bites down on the inside of his cheek, trying to ignore the uncomfortable thump of his heart against his breast. “D’you mind coming inside with me? I promise it’ll be quick.”

“Y-yeah,” Vinny rasps, throat suddenly dry.

Peralta leads him inside, through the precinct lobby, and into an elevator, where he hits the button for the fourth floor. Peralta stands close, hands on his hips, and Vinny realizes as the elevator doors slide closed that at a glance, it looks as though Peralta has a hold of Vinny’s elbow. Like he’s just arrested him and is leading him to yet another holding cell.

The fourth floor is bustling with activity when the doors slide open and Vinny feels his eyes go impossibly wide as Jake quietly leads him forward. There are people everywhere, officers in uniforms and people in handcuffs and desks, half a dozen desks, some overflowing with personal trinkets, some completely bare aside from a computer.

Briefly, he wonders which one is Amy’s.

Peralta tells him to wait next to a set of closed doors bearing a nameplate that declares the room beyond them to be the Briefing Room, and then scurries off toward a long hallway a few yards past that. Vinny shifts his weight from foot to foot nervously, hardly allowing himself to peer around the room for fear of someone recognizing him and dragging him into the holding cell. He does manage to get a few furtive sidelong glances in, though; there’s a woman with wildly curly hair talking to another woman with dark red hair in front of an office of some kind, and he can see inside that office - three men are in there, looking to be deep in conversation. Two of those men have their backs turned to Vinny, but the one behind the desk - the one whose gaze is piercing, even behind his reading glasses - is looking right at him.

“Both of the interrogation rooms are full,” Peralta’s voice snaps him out of his trance. He looks apologetic, but Vinny shrugs. “We could just - in here -” He pushes one of the briefing room doors open and gestures for Vinny to move forward. Vinny shuffles inside slowly, scanning the room, wondering how many times Amy has been in here. “Here,” Peralta shuts the door and then reaches for Vinny’s arm, the handcuff keys in his hand.

Vinny massages his wrists when Peralta removes the cuffs, twisting away toward the table to his right. “Am I in trouble?”

Peralta pauses, halfway through the motion of tucking the handcuffs into his pocket. “No! God, no, you’re not in trouble. I just - I wanted to - to talk to you. To  _ thank _ you, actually.” Vinny furrows his brow, and Peralta gestures to the chair to Vinny’s left as he perches on the edge of the table at the front of the room. Vinny sinks numbly down into his chair. “I know...I know what happened at the warehouse was…” he trails, and then shakes his head. “I know you went through a lot. And I also know you sacrificed a lot. But I just - I -” he pushes off the desk and starts pacing, back and forth, before he stops right in front of Vinny. He inhales deeply through his nose, and then thrusts his hand forward, stopping right over the tabletop, a foot from Vinny’s face.

Vinny stares at his hand before his gaze lifts back up to Peralta’s face. “What?”

“You’re ninety percent of the reason Amy’s still alive right now.” Peralta says, and his voice comes out a little husky, a little forced, like the words he’s stringing together represent an unfathomable possibility that was almost his reality. “And I just - I wanted to, to...thank you. She’s been my partner up here for so long, she’s my  _ best friend _ , and - well, I...probably would have completely lost my mind if she’d…” He swallows thickly, his Adam’s Apple bobbing, and Vinny feels utterly frozen in place. He forces himself to move, though, forces his arm up to grab Peralta’s outstretched hand. A brief half-smile that doesn’t touch his eyes flashes across his face in response. “I’ve been looking for you guys for a few weeks now.” Peralta says, dropping Vinny’s hand and backing up a few paces to reclaim his spot on the table across from Vinny’s. “We got notified first thing this morning that Judy’d been arrested since we had a warrant out for his arrest from, like, two years ago.” He rolls his eyes, and Vinny wishes he’d paid more attention when Doug was talking about his history with Peralta.

“So - so Amy doesn’t know I’m here?” Vinny hears himself ask.

Peralta’s face softens infinitessimally at the sound of her name. “No,” he confirms, shaking his head. “It’s a big thing - I owe her majorly for something she did for me a couple of weeks ago, so I decided to get even by finding you and Judy.”

“Is she here?” Vinny asks, small and hopeful.

Peralta’s brows draw together. “No. She - she’s at home, still. Her doctor said she should be cleared to come back to work next week, and she’ll be ready for active duty in another month.” He sounds distantly excited, and Vinny sort of understands. “I’m sorry, man. I was gonna FaceTime her in a second -”

The briefing room doors swing open suddenly, and Vinny and Peralta both jump at the sudden intrusion. It’s the man from inside the office, the one who’d been eyeing Vinny over his reading glasses. Vinny straightens up in his seat, trying to inhale, and as the officer steps further into the room, Vinny’s struck nearly upside the head with recognition.

It’s the Vice Principal Cop from outside the warehouse.

“Captain!” Peralta chirps, pushing up off the table to stand. “I was just - the interrogation rooms are full -”

“I’m well aware, detective.” The captain interrupts. He’s still looking at Vinny. “I wanted to have a word with your perp.”

“Oh he’s - uh,” Peralta looks utterly conflicted. “He’s not really a - a  _ perp _ -”

“Vincent Riviero, former drug dealer for the Fumero drug cartel.” Peralta seems to quail a bit, and Vinny closes his eyes in an effort to steal himself. “Most recently, neighbor to one Melissa Iannucci.” Vinny’s eyes snap open. The captain is smiling at him, small and secret, and Peralta looks like he’s just been handed a check for ten thousand dollars. “I believe I recall seeing you outside of the warehouse on the evening of the raid, is that correct?”

“Y-yes, sir.”

The captain turns to Peralta. “Where’d you find him?”

“Police station in Connecticut.” Peralta says, sounding oddly proud.

The captain nods slowly before turning back toward Vinny. “Would you give us a moment, detective? I’d like to speak with Mr. Riviero in private.”

Peralta lurches forward, starting toward the door, but not before he pauses right in front of Vinny. “He’s not as scary as he seems,” Peralta hisses before darting toward the doors and closing them behind himself.

“My name is Captain Ray Holt.” Captain Holt starts after a moment of silence. “I’d like to start by thanking you for your tremendous sacrifice over the last nine months. I understand that you weren’t always aware of it, but you were instrumental in keeping my detective alive, and for that, my precinct will always be indebted to you.”

Vinny feels heat rising up in his face. “She’s a good person,” he mumbles.

“Indeed. As are you.” Holt shifts slightly, turning half a degree toward the doors, but his calculating gaze never once wavers from Vinny’s face. “You’ve been on the run for close to two months now, is that correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And now that you’ve returned to New York - cleared of all charges - do you have any prospects for a job?”

Vinny blinks rapidly. He hadn’t even  _ thought _ about it. “No.” He says, dropping his gaze to the tabletop beneath his forearms.

“Is there a career field in which you have a particular interest?”

Vinny can feel himself fidgeting. “Not - not really,” he says truthfully. “I mean I - I want to help people. It felt good to do good things, and...I don’t know.”

Holt nods thoughtfully. “Do you have a college education, Mr. Riviero?”

“Uh, you can - you can call me Vinny. And no, I don’t.”

Holt nods, undeterred. “Would you like to work here at the precinct while you search for a more suitable alternative?” Vinny feels his jaw drop. “I know our second floor is in desperate need of a civilian administrator.”

“Are - are you serious?”

He has this calm, knowing smile on his face. “Quite serious.” A small, unfiltered laugh cracks through the shock, escaping Vinny’s gaping mouth on an exhale. “Don’t feel as though you must give me an answer right now. Take some time and explore other options, if you’d like -”

“No way, I’d be an idiot to say no to this.  _ Thank you _ .” Vinny leaps up and rushes around his table to vigorously shake Holt’s hand. “I swear I won’t disappoint you, sir.”

“I have no doubts. Detective Santiago has spoken very highly of you lately.”

Vinny’s heart skips a beat. “She - she has?”

Holt glances toward the door, and his smile morphs slightly. “She has.” He confirms, before tilting his head toward the door. “Of course, you could ask her yourself.”

Vinny’s head whips toward the door. The blinds are open just enough to see the bullpen, and on the other side of the floor, he can see Peralta standing by the windows, speaking excitably to a very familiar woman.

Peralta’s practically bouncing out of his shoes, and Amy’s clearly amused, but the moment he points wildly toward the briefing room the broad grin falls from Amy’s face. She turns toward the doors, their eyes meet through the blinds, and he sees her gasp.

He can’t remember opening the doors or running toward her, but the next thing he knows he’s out in the middle of the bullpen with Amy’s arms flung tightly around his neck. He hauls her closer with his arms around her middle, the noises coming from the two of them somewhere between laughter and sobs of relief. She’s mumbling incoherently into his shoulder, something that sounds vaguely like his name, and when he squeezes his eyes shut he feels tears cooling against his face.

“How - how - how are you  _ here _ ?” She all but shrieks when he finally pulls away. 

He chokes out a laugh when her hands rise up to hold his face, reaching up to gently squeeze her forearms. “Your partner,” is all he manages to say.

Amy’s hands are still on his face when she whips around toward Peralta, who’s now perched on the corner of a desk, arms folded over his chest, watching the scene unfold with a broad grin on his face. He shrugs at Amy’s silent question, and then winks. “We’re even.”

Amy huffs out a laugh before turning back to Vinny. “I can’t believe this, I  _ can’t believe _ \- I didn’t think I’d ever  _ see  _ you again.”

“Me either.” Vinny says honestly. “I’m so glad you’re okay.” She hugs him again and he buries his face in her shoulder, eyes closed. “I’m so glad you’re okay,” he repeats in a whisper.

She pulls back, a breathless laugh on her lips and tears in her eyes. “Do you have somewhere to stay? Any money, anything like that?”

“Yeah, yeah, I got enough left over to afford a hotel while I look for an apartment.” 

“What about a job? Do you need help finding a job?”

He shakes his head, mouth open to tell her the good news, but Captain Holt beats him to it. “Mr. Riviero will actually be joining us here at the Nine-Nine as our second floor civilian administrator.” Holt says, all business as he strides out of the briefing room. Amy’s hands tighten to nearly vice-like proportions on Vinny’s arms. “He’ll start on Monday, provided he comes to my office to fill out the necessary paperwork when he’s done catching up with you.”

“Wait, wait -” she seems to be having trouble comprehending what she’s just heard, shaking her head quickly, eyes closing briefly. “Captain Holt, you - you offered him a job here?”

Holt nods, completely straight-faced aside from the merry twinkle in his eye. “Indeed. I’ve heard you speaking so highly of him for the last few weeks. The Nine-Nine needs people like Vinny.” He pauses, his lingering gaze bouncing from Vinny back to Amy. “And...to quote your partner...we’re even.”

Amy covers her mouth with one hand, the tears gathered in her eyes spilling out down her face. Vinny grins widely, glancing from Holt and Peralta back to Amy, fully understanding the events of the morning for what they truly are: repayment. A thanks, not to him and everything he did, but to Amy.

“Thank you, Captain.” She whispers between her fingers.

Holt nods, and then turns his attention to Vinny. “If you could please join me in my office so you can complete the necessary paperwork.”

Vinny squeezes Amy’s arm one last time before pulling away from her to follow Holt toward his office. The room is cool, just enough to raise goosebumps on his arms, and he waits to sit down until Captain Holt has taken the seat behind the desk. “This shouldn’t take too long,” Holt tells him, eyes glued to his computer screen. “I just have to print them out. I’ll get them from Gina’s desk, just wait one moment.”

He stands again and starts toward the door, and Vinny twists around in his seat to watch him leave. Through the open windows he can see the entire bullpen, and even though the place is still alive with activity, his gaze locks in on two people standing rather still over on the left side of the floor.

Amy’s hands frame Peralta’s face while his rest right in the curve of her waist. Their kiss is chaste and slow (so starkly unlike what he’d caught a glimpse of in that alley) but so, so passionate in the set of their facial expressions and the gentle, readjusting grip of his hands on her waist. Vinny’s heart clenches at the sight; suddenly, he desperately misses Jessica.

Holt seems to catch his lingering stare through the window. He closes the door to his office quietly, and does not seem to be in a hurry to recapture Vinny’s attention once he’s reseated behind his desk. “That wouldn’t have been possible without you.” He says rather conversationally as he slides the small packet of paperwork, along with a pen, across his desk toward Vinny.

Vinny glances back over his shoulder one last time - they’re no longer kissing, but the tenderness is still there, unmistakable even across the floor. “She’s really okay, then,” Vinny says as he returns his attention to Holt.

Holt seems to contemplate it for a moment, before he nods. “She’s really okay.”

Vinny smiles, picks up the pen, and begins signing his name.


	18. epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the end

It’s 7:03 AM when Amy smooths out the last crease in her blouse. She pauses, staring at herself in the mirror above her sink, only half-hearing the sounds of Jake somewhere out in the bedroom. She takes a deep breath against the nerves dancing in the pit of her stomach, running her hands down her sides one last time.

She’s going back to work today, for the first time in nearly a year. It’s only desk duty - she’s still got another two weeks of physical therapy before her doctor will even consider clearing her for active duty - but it’s a major step in the right direction. She smiles, and in her reflection she can clearly see her own nerves.

Jake knocks on the slightly ajar bathroom door and she turns to face him as the door swings open. He’s leaning against the side of the doorframe, an excited grin on his face; just the sight of him calms her nerves considerably. “You almost ready,  _ detective _ ?”

“I still don’t get why we have to be ready so early,” she says, brushing past him to get back into her bedroom. She feels him following her, back a few paces, probably openly ogling her in her old familiar burgundy pant suit that she knows he’s always particularly liked. Her purse is hanging off the back of her desk chair, along with her suit jacket, and she grabs both before turning back to face him. “Our shift doesn’t start for an hour and a half.”

“I know,” Jake says, and his grin is conspiratorial in a way that reminds her of the early days of their partnership, when his main mode of communication was practical jokes at her expense. “I wanted to take you out to breakfast before your first day back.”

She narrows her eyes suspiciously. “The whole squad is waiting for us, aren’t they?”

He blinks. “What? No.”

“Yes they are.”

“They’re  _ not _ , do you really think I’d be able to convince Gina to get out of bed before eight o’clock?”

“What did you bribe her with?”

He stares a beat longer before his shoulders slump. “I have to file all Holt’s paperwork for a week,” he mutters. Amy rolls her eyes. “It’ll be worth it, though, just - act surprised when we get there, okay? Please?”

She leans back into her dresser as he approaches, lifting her arms up to drape them over his shoulders to pull him down to her level. She kisses him softly, smiling against his lips when he hums against her, and when she pulls back the look on his face is dazed. “I promise I’ll act surprised.” She says quietly.

He kisses the end of her nose and then bounds of of the bedroom, leaving her alone and laughing as she shrugs her jacket on. Sunlight is only just beginning to pour through her bedroom window, casting long columns of light across her neatly made bed, but before she can worry herself over the dust motes dancing through those shafts of light she hears her front door open on the other side of her apartment. “Ames, you ready?” Jake calls.

Amy takes one last look at herself in the mirror - shoulders squared, chin raised high - and she smiles.

“I’m ready.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> good lord where do i start
> 
> this has been an ongoing project for the last seven months, and has become a pretty significant part of my life in that time. this fic has been such a labor of love, and i honestly can't believe it's over.
> 
> to everyone who left kudos and comments on this fic, thank you. your support has meant the whole world to me.
> 
> to those who've sought me out on tumblr to ask about this fic, your tenacity inspires me, and i really really hope that this ending was worth the wait.
> 
> and lastly, to phil - thank you so, so much for the inspiration for this fic. i couldn't have done this without you.
> 
> i love each and every one of you so much!! thank you!!!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [it's been a long, long time](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14808224) by [stolethekey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stolethekey/pseuds/stolethekey)




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